News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
(This list may get expanded when necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].
Depressing as hell, but I don't really see another great option. Y'all better be hardening your borders with Russia and getting your militaries prepared. 50% of our country either betrayed us, or betrayed us by not voting. I don't see us getting back to normal for 10-20 years, based on the amount of damage they are doing to our country ATM.
I feel terrible for our friends and allies. :/
Fuck, never thought I’d agree with something like this and actually think the reasoning I give myself, to let myself agree with such obviously bad stuff, makes sense.
It’s so fucking depressing. While I don’t live in Poland, I live in a Russia-bordering country with similar stuff having been debated for a very long time, and still today, though as I understand it, we never gave up our mines in the first place, for reasons that now make perfect sense and seem good, but without hindsight never seemed good in the past and seemed simply wrong.
We do A, that’s very bad and leaves us open for attack, which doesn’t seem like such fantasy today, when Ukraine is under such an attack. But say we do B… that’s morally reprehensible and just outright bad, too.
I can’t reason about these things, because it just ends up feeling like I am abandoning my principles and some ethical standards I’ve long held… but then again I can’t rightly go against these things either, because they seem perfectly rational deterrents right now, to avoid a majorly fucked up situation down the road.
I feel like I’m losing myself as a human, as a conscious being, because the reality no longer matches the expectations I’ve had and the “rules” I’ve long maintained do exist.
But is it better to now feel like you’re betraying yourself, to potentially help defend future generations from having to lose themselves in a similar manner? Or is it better to stay true to myself and potentially help the fall of our current progressive, socially even impressive situation, after which the principles I stood so true to, are no longer even a possibility? Or does choosing the former actually lead to the increase of the chance of future looking equally bleak and unstable?
I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. And I hate it.
That would probably randomly kill refugees, wouldn't it?
Belarusian ones? Probably.
Not just those, Putin and Lukashenko have variously urged groups of Syrians etc. to cross the EU border, in an attempt to destabilize the EU.
I have no concept of mines - is that a lot or just a small amount for that area?
According to wikipedia The border between Poland and Russia is 232km long. So one million mines spread out over 232 km would come down to one mine ever 23cm. So yeah, this is a lot.
So north Korean border has around two million.
If they were put there by North Korea, are 90% of them made of cardboard like the display fruit in their fake supermarkets?
Landmines are really easy, so probably not
Assuming Belarus and russian (kilingrad) borders 626km in length, assume 1 km deep 626km^2, million/626= 1597
Then 1km2/ 1597 = 626
So 1 in every 20x30m space
If only 500m deep then one every 20x15m
That about the size of a house and garden
I would think a million is a lot for any amount of anything except for like grains of rice
"I love rice when I'm hungry and want 2,000 of something."
Good time to start planning. Well done, Poland.
I dont know, but mines are generally a really shitty technology. In other regions of the world there are still people dying to this day, because of uncleared mines. This will also kill a lot of refugees who try to come into the EU.
Real refugees who try to come into the EU are welcomed to enter through designated border crossings.
You do know, that Poland has been recorded to perform pushbacks on its borders? And now you can guess why people dont want to enter the country through official ways. Also a lot of refugees dont want to seek asylum in Poland, but in other EU countries so entering through official ways might be suboptimal for them.
Also simply saying "Just enter the country through official ways" disregards the situation those refugees are often I to where they have to fear to get pushed back to Die in the wild. No matter what you will do people will always use unofficial ways.
Careful with your logic!
The problem isn't the known minefields. Those are fine, you can put a big fucking fence around it and place a sign.
The danger is all the non-marked minefields. All the random mines placed by small units for tactical reasons, all the stuff that wasn't recorded anywhere. The fields Ukraine place in Ukraine aren't the problem, they know where those are. The ones Russia places are a problem, because (judging by the fact that russians still occasionally run into their own mines) they don't even know where they are.
The Problem with known minefields is,that if enough time passes, without the fields getting cleared, people might forget about it and then you have one hell of a problem.
What do you suggest instead?
First of all: Literally everything else.
Secondly: Russia is failing to invade Ukraine for 3 years. Do you really think that we are anywhere close to having a war between Russia and NATO? I think its kinda sad seeing all this fearmongering that Russia is about to attack us tomorrow while they still fail to invade Ukraine.
A good thing you're not in charge of military planning.
And if Trump forces a "peace" deal? Allows Russia to upgrade, rearm and recruit? Which is very much in the cards, atm. Better to have and not need, than to need and not have.
This is vastly preferable to other measures, because a good ~~fences~~ lines of defense make for good neighbors. Letting the Russians know there's mines there, that Poland is totally fine with killing one million russians stepping across the border, sends one hell of a message.