PieFed DKRussia ‘ready’ for war with Europe, Putin says, as US peace talks end without progress
MicroWavewww.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/02/witkoff-i…
Russia and the US did not make progress toward a peace deal for Ukraine during their talks, a senior aide to Vladimir Putin has said, hours after the Russian president issued threats that Russia was ready for war with Europe.
In remarks to Russian media, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that after a five-hour meeting with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the two sides were “neither further nor closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine. There is a lot of work to be done.”
The downbeat assessment of Tuesday night’s diplomacy follows combative opening statements from Putin as Witkoff and Kushnerarrived for talks at the Kremlin, in which he accused European powers of sabotaging peace in Ukraine and that “European demands” on ending the war were “not acceptable to Russia”.
Russia wasn’t even ready to invade one of its former blocs. And that bloc has more than decimated its forces and resources.
But hey, my grandfather got to watch Allied Europe destroy a fascist state that thought it could take over the world, now me and my son get to as well.
“When you are weak, pretend you are strong.” Pretty much sums it up.
This is actually reasonable in warfare and encouraged by Sun Tzu, but once the deception is exposed, there is little advantage in clinging to it.
Russia exposed the deception by completely fucking up the invasion of Ukraine.
But there’s also nothing to gain by admitting and stopping the deception. As long as there’s one useful idiot who can be deceived, you cna keep it going.
And unfortunately there’s a lot of useful idiots.
Someone needs to bust out the old iraq propaganda minister meme.
Except this time the fascist states are nuclear capable. The idea here is to avoid nuclear war.
Then they should leave Ukraine.
That’s always been a lopsided proposition for Russia in this invasion. The prevailing winds blow east and they’d be poisoning themselves as much as anyone.
You know, like Chernobyl which they also bombed.
The USSR was nuclear-capable when it collapsed. Russia was nuclear-capable while failing in Afghanistan, and also has been in its so-far failed attack on Ukraine. Same goes for the US in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. A country having nukes doesn’t mean you have to comply with its every whim.
That bloc has done more than destroy 10% of russian forces. You are not using that word correctly.
They said ‘more than decimated’, so your semantic pedantry isn’t just pointless, it’s also wrong.
They also said that their invasion of Ukraine would take only three days.
They said they would never attack Ukraine. In fact they’ve written it down and signed it.
Just like they were ready to fully conquer Ukraine, fight?
Just gonna take a little long weekend and acquire some territory, nothin fancy.
OP reproduced in the post title a doctored headline to make Russia sound aggressive. The headline has been modified since, and isn’t reflected in the post title as of my comment. Putin’s original words were “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”.
Russia has been committing low-grade acts of war against Europe for some time now, and Russia is in no condition to fight Europe. So, however much you want to quibble about the headline, this is just more of Putin’s lies and empty threats.
And if invading a neighboring country isn’t aggression, you have a very odd definition of the term.
Lmfao no you’re not, fuckwit. You’re deploying infantry bum rushes in appropriated civilian sedans with the doors ripped off. The Taliban has better kit than that, for fuck’s sake.
According to the tankies, Russia now has the largest army ever at 1.5m men and are stronger than when they started the special operation. So like they have ..the cards…and not just endless meat waves. It doesn’t matter they’ve only gained inches of territory in months.
Or that Ukraine is holding them off with basically scraps of obsolete Western military equipment, very little first line hardware.
Attack Europe and you find the full weight of NATO’s first line military hardware shoved up your ass. Somebody pushes a button somewhere and a few dozen Tomahawk missiles destroy your ability to wage war in an afternoon. Nukes not even needed if every airfield and military supply depot within 500 mi of Europe is a smoking crater.
And Ukraine using some modern stuff manage to deep strike Russian economic targets. And new homegrown stuff too.
Putin is trying to save face and trying to entice NATO to attack Russia to justify the wars
Trump is Putin’s hail-Mary. The only way Putin gets a victory in Ukraine is if it is handed to him.
Now he’s ready for war now that his puppet is back in power.
Yeah, anyone seeing this as Putin doing jackshit is kidding themselves.
This is about having the US attack Europe. Or maybe just Ukraine. Who knows.
It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the US is compromised, and Europe needs to be ready for that yesterday.
I don’t see an appetite in the states for war with Venezuela, a nation we’ve been conditioned to think of as godless socialists for 20+ years, let alone one with NATO allies. Trump doesn’t have unlimited power, as much as he wishes he does.
Either way, Europe should be gearing up.
I concur that a fight against EU is just completely unlikely, I do think Venezuela is possible since his administration has pretty much been giving free reign and seems to have their heart set on it…
I don’t think having the US attack them is in the cards, but I could see them sitting such a conflict out.
The US needs to clean house, and the sooner, the better.
Otherwise we’re going to be drawn into the wrong side of a world war.
The original headline was doctored by The Guardian to promote warmongering in Europe, and has been edited since (not reflected on the post title as of my comment). Putin’s actual words were “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”, you can find it inside the article some paragraphs in.
Russia says a lot of things. But Europe does need to step up production quickly.
Are they now..? Then it seems rather odd - in light of their usual behavior - that they’re just talking instead of acting upon it.
Why, it’s almost like Putin is so completely full of shit that the pressure is forcing it out his mouth.
The original headline (current post title) was doctored by The Guardian in a blatant attempt of warmongering, and has been edited since. Putin’s actual words can be found some paragraphs into the article: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
He says, as they are press-ganging migrants to fight on the front lines and fabricating evidence in order to seize oligarch fortunes.
He did not say what the original headline (post titles) implies. The headline has since then been edited to better reflect Putin’s words: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
More of the aggressor-as-victim narrative.
I watched that part. Putin visibly flinches when he realizes what he said and then for the following few sentences tries to lighten the message down. It’s kinda fun to see him that weak in front a microphone.
He’s so not ready for a war with Europe that he cannot even lie about it.
But headline creators don’t give a fuck about that of course.
Russia losing to a small country and now think they can take on all of the Europe?
We know his orange sock puppet has full on dementia, maybe Pootin needs a checkup too?
The original headline was heavily doctored to make Putin’s words look much more aggressive, and has been edited since, which isn’t reflected in the post title as of the time of this article. Putin’s actual words are some paragraphs into the article: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
You forgot that this ‘small country’ has the second largest military in Europe behind only Russia, and one that was trained by NATO since 2014.
When Ukraine was invaded it had an army of approx 150k troops. Several hundred tanks. A couple of hundred aircraft. A couple of hundred rocket projectors.
None of it newer than the early 90s.
Russia had nearly a million troops, 12,000 tanks, several thousand aircraft, thousands and thousands of rocket projectors and heavy artillery.
And nuclear weapons.
Tell us again how they were evenly matched?
By any normal metric, Russia should have steamrolled Ukraine. The fact it didnt, even with that huge advantage means that any major european power (UK/France/Germany/Poland) could fend them off quite easily, even alone. But we aren’t alone, Russia would be trying to take us all off the board.
And Russia sent in approx 150k troops.
Ukraine had a thousand tanks at the start of the war. At least half of them were modernized. In fact, the Ukrainian tank fleet was larger(!!!) than America had active if you leave out the National Guard!
Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have less than a thousand tanks combined.
If you want to talk about artillery, Ukraine had around the same amount of SPGs that the US(!!!) has, in 2S3s alone.
Russia only had ~3000 operational tanks at the start of the special military operation.
With what? German broomsticks and tankless tank brigades? The ‘mighty’ French air force that has enough ammunition for a mere 3 days of combat? The British military that sent all of their SPGs to Ukraine resulting in them having to go to Sweden to beg for more? You think this force can prevent Russians from cutting the Suwałki Gap?
Out of all of EU, Poland is probably number one, and they sent half their tank fleet to Ukraine!
As much as we hate to admit it, I agree with you. Ukraine was better equipped and prepared than most European countries currently are.
If NATO fights together they will defeat Russia, but Russia could easily beat many of the small countries in Europe and then add their soldiers and production to their own and keep moving on if fighting one by one.
Russia currently produces more tanks, drones, and artillery per year than most European countries have total in their arsenal and more total than all of NATO combined produce per year.
And if you think I’m just some tankie, please see my post history and the links below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_main_battle_tanks_by_country
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/artillery-by-country
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-gears-up-for-a-tank-surge-1100-new-t-90m2-planned-in-secret-wartime-program-12403
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ammunition-ukraine/
https://news.sky.com/story/russian-suicide-drone-launches-quadruple-this-year-13463263
“You and what army?”
They are allied with that terrorist organisation. Amerkkka or something
Kinda hard to rattle your saber when you already smashed it to pieces failing to kill a crippled animal.
well if Russia is as “ready” to fight Europe as it was to fight Ukraine, we have no problem
Destroyed lives and whole towns is hardly a “no problem”. russia needs a good kick in the teeth, but these things are never free. I hope Europe is ready to finally stand up.
Ok, Drax the Destroyer, good point
Europe is preventing nothing but the full annexation of Ukraine.
France, laughing with a functional nuclear arsenal…
Germany, not laughing when they remember where France had the targets set.
Sounds a lot like the orange fuck stains crying, bow it make sense where he learned it. Hey trump, tru shutting the fuck up and dying, do Americans a favorite
Oh fucking bring it you cold war-ass Goldeneye dingdong, we’re ready
We are not ready though. Mentally, sure, but in case of an all out war we would still run out of ammo, bombs and manpower in weeks. Only now do we see the first factories and production lines coming online based on the investments of the past years and even then not all the supply lines have been adjusted for it. Europe could probably be ready by the end of 2027 at the earliest, provided it removes its command and control dependency from the US.
Realistically, Europe won’t be ready until 2030. That’s not to say we wouldn’t be able to get ready sooner, we absolutely would, if we were to switch to a war economy. But nobody wants that, because it ruins your economy and is grossly expensive.
That doesn’t mean we would get crushed, that wouldn’t be the case, but we would be on the defensive for a while until the gears of war are properly greased.
All that could very well be true, but Russia has also blown through all their best men, ammo, and gear like 2 years ago at this point. They’ve been using shit from the cold war and north korea and even ww2 tanks in some cases. They’ve forced or bribed every russian man into service they can realistically afford and are using expensive and ill-trained foreign troops who are closer to slaves than soldiers. They’re being issued paintball gear instead of body armor in some cases for goodness sakes. They’ve had to re-insitute the Stalin-era orders that any man refusing to advance or fight will be shot. Russia, like the USSR before it, looks way scary on paper, but is so rotten, corrupt, and hollowed out in reality that it threatens to collapse dramatically at any moment honestly.
If Russia somehow has enough left in the tank to go toe-to-toe with every European military at the same time, then they should have easily beat Ukraine with such a force at any point in the last 3 years. The fact that they are unable to muster the resources to push over even little Ukraine bodes really really badly for them if more nations get directly involved.
The original headline was doctored to make it seem like Putin was threatening Europe with war, and has been changed since (not reflected in the post title as of this comment). Putin’s actual words are some paragraphs into the article:
“Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
Art of the deal
it really was a shit book
These .ml folks comments are diabolical 🤣
Seems like a good time for the EU to get ready for moving troops to Ukraine and start with “flying sanctions” too.
Ready to collapse?
Russia is struggling against one country, how TF do they think they could take on Europe as a whole?
Putin can go to war on his own asshole!
He kinda already did.
Cool, now that Putin is openly threatening war with Europe they will of course stop buying his oil…right!!??
I wish I could have such a small minded view of world politics that I could also pretend it’s as simple as: just stopy buying that thing from that person.
And then what? Northern Europe can heat their homes on hopes and dreams? Throw up a couple nuclear reactors that are known to only take months to build and bring online?
Europe has been actively moving away from Russian oil where possible (down to 19% from a high of 27%), but it’s not like the market just magically is going to come up with enough supply for the entire continent overnight.
That’s ignoring the fact that the vast majority of “european” purchases come from a handful of countries, primarily Hungary, who is also being run by a pro-Russian dictator.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/3/how-much-of-europes-oil-and-gas-still-comes-from-russia
It literally is that simple. The fact the Europe was giving so much money is what caused this problem in the first place. It is not like Russia just turned into a criminal authoritarian state yesterday.
I wish I could have such a small minded view of the world that supplying a bunch of criminals vast amounts of money because it is cheaper wouldn’t have long lasting repercussions.
Some places like Germany could literally cut all imports tomorrow without any significant pain.
They are still working on sanctions. Let that sink in. The latest round didn’t even start until 2022. Russia has been a clear problem since 2014. I am sure when these policies come into full effect in 2027 the problem will finally be solved /S
You are being lied to by OP. Look into the article to see Putin’s actual words:
“Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
Sure, grandpa. Let’s get you back to prison…
Whatever…
USA will like very much war between Russia and EU.
To everyone saying Russia can’t go to war with Europe because of their failures in Ukraine: this is just not true, and a dangerous assumption.
Their economy has been on a war footing for some time now, and they don’t sacrifice preparedness for war with NATO to support the war in Ukraine. That’s why they’ve thrown all their old inventory at Ukraine. Use it up to soak up ammunition, shift the economy to build new equipment.
Does everyone really think all this hesitation from Europe is because they think Russia has been neutered?
All indicators suggests their logistics and resource management is under serious strain. They do not have the industrial output to take Ukraine in 4 years, let alone all of a United Europe and it’s allies.
First of all, Russia has lost a bunch of their newer tech. Second, they aren’t building any new equipment of higher tech than what they have lost to Ukraine because Russia is a fucking shit hole that has been exposed as lying about their technical and production capabilities.
Russia has been expanding T-90M production for example with much of the T-90Ms staying within Russia as per NATO themselves:
“In 2021, before the invasion, Russia made about 40 of its main battle tanks, the T-90M, according to Western intelligence estimates. Now it is producing nearly 300 a year. A senior Finnish military official said almost none are being sent to the front line in Ukraine, but are staying on Russian soil for later use.”
Source: https://archive.ph/20250516130430/https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-military-nato-europe-finland-ff53b912
So, what are you talking about?
Yup and I noticed they’ve been saving their good jets for a rainy day too. Lost a few of the 1980s ones but none of the latest generation.
What are these ‘indicators’?
What indicatiors are those? All the third party analyses that I can find show that Russia is still the second most militarily powerful nation in the world, with a huge reserve of tanks, planes, missiles and manpower to fight with, with production only speeding up.
It’s not all peachy for Russia by any means, but to assume they are weak because of their failures in Ukraine is disingenuous. If they wanted to sacrifice their readiness against NATO, they could absolutely take Ukraine. But no one is going to make their homeland vulnerable for land expansion, it doesn’t make sense.
They aren’t ready against any major power, Europe, US or China.
I thought all the hesitation was because of the nukes.
I’m pretty sure it’s the nukes.
Narrator - “It was the nukes”
And every time the politicians start with “the costs to mah economy”. They know every bullet fired means less healthcare and pension they can give to voters and that’s often sensitive thing during elections.
But by now they’re figuring out that acting like total wussies is losing votes too.
No one is using nuclear weapons.
But let’s say I’m wrong. We should still not fear them. The reason being that accepting nuclear blackmail destines the human race to even more misery and pain than it experiences now.
Rip the bandaid off. Call the nuclear bluff. Then once it proves toothless and we don’t have fascists at the helm, work on nuclear disarmament so we don’t have any accidents.
Is that gamble worth the lives of nearly every living thing on the planet and the future of human civilization?
Russia alone has enough nuclear weapons to cause a mass extinction event. Even if no one else fires a single one, they could erase life as we know it.
If Putin sees a Leopard tank in Moscow, are you sure he wouldn’t order a launch? And if Britain or the French see those missiles and bombers, are you sure they won’t launch in retaliation?
That’s the logic that European leaders are operating under. If they pull the trigger on article 5 and launch a war with Russia, even if they win, everyone could still lose literally everything.
Push Russia out of Ukraine. No need to cross the border into Russia. Totally justified, no threat to Moscow. Sets precedent.
Why would that be so risky? If the answer is because nukes, my point stands.
You’re reacting to a doctored headline making it seem like Putin is threatening Europe with war. Putin’s words, as portrayed inside the article, clearly mean the opposite: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now.”
First of all, my comment was not about the headline so much as all the comments talking about Russia not being ready, so not sure what “reacting” I was doing yo the headline (can you read?) Secondly, the headline does not “seem like” Putin is threatening Europe with war. Thirdly, your “opposite” line at the end is basically the exact same thing as the headline you are criticizing ("we are ready” = “Putin says Russia is ready")
You’ve wasted my precious electrons thank you
Deleted by author
The original headline of The Guardian was not a literal citation of Putin, and has been modified accordingly, you should edit the post title to match the headline.
What Putin actually said is explicited inside in the article: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we are ready right now”