If the US sided with Russia against Europe a big chunk of the US population would oppose that. (But even staying neutral and not supporting a NATO nation should one be attacked by Russia would be a bad outcome.)

This is temporary. The US has a lot more to lose by siding with Russia

is there a difference? supply chain attacks are still attacks

Drone overflights are not the problem he thinks it is. A western military is categorically prohibited from shooting at civilians and their things. And the people who say "just shoot them" don't understand what theyre asking for.

Having said that, the Germans have for decades not funded their military. Politicians have for decades degraded the profession of war and those who pursue it and now those chickens are coming home to roost.

Frankly they deserve this, and they are extremely lucky their opponent is so butthurt they're doing this sabotage during peacetime so the Germans at least have the option to fix themselves.

Of course it's obvious to them, it doesn't make it any less serious.

That would be like saying blowing up an airport runaway isn't serious because you can obviously tell the runaway is faulty - so no harm done!

Err, I would have agreed with you before this war lmao, and after learning russia military history they frequently don't inspect shit

ah that's where you're coming from (see my other comment)

https://www.mollet.de/info/schuettdichte-und-schuettgewicht....

iron and steel chips still are about 2 kg/l

aluminum is 200g / l

so one 55gal trash bin is still about 40 something kg, four dozen.

so for aluminum and aluminum only it may be multiple trash bins

It's not like sabotaging German ships will cause Germany to increase military spending or fix the Bundeswehr's comically bad procurement process so there is little risk for Russia in these actions.

The WSJ does not agree with your theory. It blames it on Zalushny.

$20 billion is nothing. Europe already froze $300 billion in Russian assets. No one believes this theory outside Ukraine.

You also have to imagine the size of the engine the shavings were deposited into. Assuming it's the new German corvette class (K130 Braunschweig), they are powered by two MTU 20V 1163 TB93 engines. Each one has about 240liters of displacement. This means each engine has about 4 55gal bags worth of cylinder volume, plus turbochargers, fuel pumps, etc. It's unlikely that ~1/5th-1/10th of the entire volume of the engine was consumed by shavings, mostly because 1/50th is probably enough to ensure major permanent damage.

Interestingly enough, the engine is produced by a company owned by the Rolls-Royce holding company, so in a meaningful way the British are helping the Germans produce warships. In the first half of the 20th century the British would have been prime suspects of the sabotage.

> Germany probably needs to rearm aggressively, given what Russia is doing, but doesn't have the society buy in to spend money on armed forced (or rather, doesn't have the buy in to spend less on other things).

In spite of Russia's propaganda and continuous subversion attack on Germany's political leadership, currently we're seeing polls showing around 70% supporting Germany's military aid to Ukraine. It might not be a uphill battle to have Germany's population invested in investing in their defense.

That newly created account was just made to spread misinformation

Security circles were very critical of the WMD story. It was the administration that steamrolled over their objections.

Iraq had WMD. :-/

> The Europeans and Biden administration had nearly 3 years to do something (...)

They did. They supported Ukraine and turned Russia's 3-day invasion into a 3-year-and-counting quagmire where:

- Russia suffered a humiliating defeat and pushed out of Kiev,

- barely made any progress beyond the initial blitzkrieg,

- got it's black sea fleet sunk and destroyed,

- saw parts of it's territory invaded and captured by Ukraine,

- is helplessly seeing it's oil industry being decimated,

- is begging the likes of Iran and North Korea for help, including boots on the ground.

As much as it pains Russia to admit, this is exactly what Russia's defeat scenario looks like: a long drawn out conflict that forces Russia to self destruct without a single boot on the ground from NATO.

Zelenskyy is talking to Trump because he doesn't have any other choice now. Trump is most likely to let Putin keep what he's captured while also requiring Ukraine to "stay neutral" (and pledge to never join NATO)... and requiring Ukraine send the US rare earth minerals.

Yes, the Biden admin was slow to let Ukraine use the weapons we gave them in an effective manner. He was afraid that Putin might go nuclear (at least initially, I think they were realizing that Putin's threats were more bark than bite in the last year or so). He was also wary of the rhetoric coming from the Trump campaign during the last year about how Biden wanted to get the US into a boots-on-the-ground war in Ukraine - in that sense he was trying to thread a needle. But Biden was very supportive of NATO, whereas Trump wants out of NATO. And Ukraine has managed to draw out a war that Russia was "supposed" to win in a couple of months to a stalemate after 3 years while also managing to capture a bit of Russian territory.

Shaw’s claims were never corroborated by primary intelligence agencies, and Primakov’s involvement remains speculative. And perhaps more tellingly, the U.S. intelligence apparatus couldn't verify these claimes despite having every incentive to do so. If such an elaborate Russian operation occurred, why did it leave behind no satellite imagery, no intercepted communications, no credible human intelligence? Nothing.

The "moved to Syria" argument is essentially the Loch Ness Monster of the WMD debate, which is to say it's constantly discussed but never conclusively proven. And given the catastrophic consequences of the war, clinging to this narrative feels less like a genuine search for truth and more like a desperate attempt to avoid accountability.

Oh OK, potentially having gas shells stored outside of Iraq, sounds plausible.

> 55 us liquid gallons = 208,198 litres

I was also confused but could be German usage where comma and dots are swapped. The German 208,198 is the same as the English 208.198

Conversely the English 1,000,000 is 1.000.000 in German! Very confusing.

Remember Germany is still the place where you say four-and-twenty for twenty-four …

Higher probability of success. With 1 shaving it could make it to an oil filter without lodging anywhere critical (like in a main bearing oil gallery or something). With a huge number of them the likelihood of clogging oil galleries and overwhelming the filtration system is very high. Also, the secondary point of the sabotage is to be detected. Even if the engine doesn't grenade itself through the hull of the ship, when they discover widespread contamination in the lubricating oil they'll have to remove and completely disassemble every single part of the engine and lubrication system. Effectively a total rebuild. So "no permanent damage" is really a very rose colored way to frame it. The cost is roughly the same.

EDIT: a super devious way to do it would be with very small magnetized filings. It would be incredibly difficult to rid the engine of those, even completely disassembled.

It's a security screwup that a ship was scheduled to be in service, but now that date might be delayed. The entire point of the boat is security. They didn't secure the thing that provides even more security.

It would have been a much bigger security screwup if it was actively in service.

For the thousands separator, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (based in France) recommends the use of a space, and as a result this is used in France.