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LET"S GAME IT OUT - Why Russia Might 'Attack' Into Poland [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-09
Breaking news is that Poland is dealing with multiple incursions into Polish airspace by Russian drones, and possibly that attacks have been made by those drones against warehouses of military supplies staged for delivery to Ukraine.
Rather than discuss the details of that reporting, let’s talk about why Russian might be doing this. (As an aside, warehouses in Poland which act as transfer locations for arms flowing to Ukraine, are valid military targets. Russia’s war of genocide is an entirely illegal war, so there are actually no valid military targets, but such warehouses would at least be more valid military targets as compared to residential blocks in Ukraine where women and children are being murdered.)
Ukraine has in recent weeks been destroying radar installations in and around Crimea, and tested their Flamingo cruise missile against a Russia site in Crimea. This suggests that Ukraine is preparing to make Crimea a focus of upcoming offensive operations.
Ukraine has been targeting oil refineries inside Russia, and fully 25% or more of Russia’s total oil refinery capacity is reportedly offline. This is a massive hit to Russia since oil revenues are the way Russia is funding this war. In addition, gas shortages are something that is very hard to hide from the Russian people.
The Russian economy is in dire straights, with high expenditures in the military segments causing high inflation, and generating shortages in manpower and supplies in non-military segments. Russian banks are likely to need bailouts this fall, and business failures in all sectors are likely to accelerate.
So Russia is in trouble. If Putin wants to continue this war (spoiler: Putin doesn’t see any way to end this war other than by ‘winning’, even if ‘winning’ might not seem possible either) then Putin will need to make large changes inside Russia.
Putin needs to solve his military manpower shortages thru some means other than throwing a lot of money at it. That means not attempting to expand the pool of contract soldiers, and instead Putin needs to use conscripted forced. However, the Russian people will need to perceive that there is a real threat to Russia itself, if conscripted forces are going to be thrown into the meatgrinder.
And Putin needs to be able to message to the Russian people about the upcoming economic hardships, and place the blame externally.
Let’s speculate: Russia does modest attacks against targets inside Poland. Poland and NATO respond “proportionately” by destroying the sites inside Russia that launched the attacks. And now Putin has his pretext for conscription and for the economic pain which is becoming harder and harder to hide from the Russian people — Russia has been attacked by NATO.
In this scenario, what is the smartest thing for Poland and NATO to do? Not to take the bait by responding with military action. Rather, tighten sanctions even more, and (finally! Dear God, finally!) seize the frozen Russian assets and transfer them to Ukraine immediately.
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