Russian State TV Wants Moscow to Conquer Three US States

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In a recent appearance on Russia’s state-run television, Russian political scientist Sergey Mikheyev suggested that the country’s “empire” should grow to encompass three American states.

“I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland,” he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. “Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I’m not sure, to be honest. We’ll clean them.”

RedIce25,
edwardthefma99,
@edwardthefma99@lemmy.world avatar

And they thought Ukraine was hard to conquer it will be like 1776 every body and her brother killing the invaders

KevonLooney,

One third of the American colonists helped the Revolutionaries, one third did nothing, and one third helped the British. The conservatives (Monarchists, Loyalists) wanted to stay part of the British Empire. The Revolutionaries were liberal democrats, literally.

SomethingBurger,

There is a 50/50 chance the MAGA crazies will side with Russia.

edwardthefma99,
@edwardthefma99@lemmy.world avatar

Why dose every one think trump and Russia are friends the steel document was proven to be fake trump hates Russia he probably would decimate there military if given the chance

Professorozone,

Maybe because he has expressed his admiration for Putin on more than one occasion, has sworn to pull all support for NATO, which was founded to defend against a Russian threat, around the time of the election the Russians hacked email accounts of prominent Democrats thus helping Trump’s campaign efforts, or because Trump chose to believe Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agency in the matter of Russian influence in the 2016 election, Trump’s national security advisor was forced to resign after he had inappropriate contact with Russia to discuss sanctions then lied about it, and because there is a boatload of circumstantial evidence, like relations his family has had with people close to Russia. Maybe for those reasons or it could be people are just really unfair to poor Mr. Trump.

DarkDarkHouse,
@DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

My first thought was Putin’s well on the way with Texas and Florida, but California might be a challenge.

FordBeeblebrox,

I thought those were two of the states before clicking, maybe Idaho as the 3rd.

DragonTypeWyvern,

Bruh if he just asked nicely for Florida he could probably get it

FireTower,
@FireTower@lemmy.world avatar

Like wrestling a pig in the mud

andrewta,

They should start with Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana. The red necks would grab every gun they have , be the shit show of the century.

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

No they wouldn’t. Because the Orange Turd would tell them that it’s okay and to just go with it.

andrewta,

i fully disagree. they would for 2 reasons:

the rednecks wouldn’t put up with some foreign nation showing up in the south

and

Trump would just turn around and claim that he didn’t want this and ask the rednecks to get involved.

or another way to put this

youtu.be/ycffZkWEVno?si=tZRLyWE3Zvy6js2a

HootinNHollerin, (edited )

Except for Atlanta, those states are currently welcoming Russian control with open arms

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Russia doesn’t have the naval, air, and amphibious forces required to do an invasion of the US to the point that they’d be fighting a land war in the first place. Doing that entails winning naval and air control adequate to move amphibious forces in.

This article is from a while back, but has a guy at Jane’s assessing that the aggregate militaries of the world wouldn’t be sufficient.

vice.com/…/we-asked-a-military-expert-if-the-whol…

AA5B,

I don’t think most countries have invested in “projecting” power very far. I do agree there probably isn’t logistics enough anywhere to handle it. However, if you start with Mexico and build your armies over years, and somehow US doesn’t notice or doesn’t intervene, now you have a land war

saltesc,

“So we get to pick up arms and kill anyone we like?”

“As long as they’re Russian forces, yes.”

“And we won’t get in trouble for that?”

“No. This situation is precisely why 2A exists. It’s very clear.”

“Ooooooh, now I get it.”

EdibleFriend,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar
floofloof,

“I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland,” he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. “Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I’m not sure, to be honest. We’ll clean them.”

This guy sounds exactly like Donald Trump.

rayyy,

The orange menace would be only too happy to oblige Putin’s every whim, after all, he is one of Trump’s main dictator heroes.

uis,

If you say so, then Trump is USSA’s Putin.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

“I want the Russian empire with Alaska, Hawaii, California, Finland, and Poland,” he said, as translated by Gerashchenko for the clip he shared. “Although Poland and Finland are so stinky, I’m not sure, to be honest. We’ll clean them.”

politico.com/…/trump-blames-california-for-wildfi…

OAKLAND — President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed California for its raging wildfires and threatened to withhold federal money, reprising his attacks from previous rounds of catastrophic blazes.

“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said at a rally in swing-state Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”

He was invoking his famous comments from 2018, when he visited the remnants of Paradise, a California town that suffered the state’s deadliest and most destructive fire. Back then, he pointed to Finland, claiming its leader said the European “forest nation” had “spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem.”

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö later said he told Trump that Finland takes care of its forests but did not say anything about raking, according to CNN.

I’m getting some decidedly conflicting messages here on the relative cleanliness of California and Finland.

NoIWontPickAName,

To be fair, the Cheeto is not wrong.

Forest fires naturally experienced small burns that take care of all of that and through human action of stopping that it is allowed a lot to build up and that is a huge cause of why there are so many giant wildfires right now

vividspecter,

And the effects of climate change making forest fires in general much more severe and more difficult to control.

AA5B,

Cheetoh is mixing two different messages:

  • yes, forests need care to prevent catastrophic fires, but that involves thing like guided logging, and letting the small fires go
  • yes, people need to rake and clear underbrush to make it tougher for the fire to spread on their property and up to their house

However there’s only so much these can help when you’re building in high fire risk areas

Crackhappy,
@Crackhappy@lemmy.world avatar

FAFO

IvanOverdrive,

A big part of belonging to a cult is acting out the communal lie. It’s a way to signal inclusion despite being antithetical to reality.

partial_accumen,

Lets say Russia magically is able to land on US soil completely intact after passing through the US Navy infested waters of the Atlantic or the Pacific. Lets just assume they can so we can continue this crazy thought experiment.

To take territory you need boots on the ground, troops, tanks, APCs, etc. These are transported by troop transport aircraft and large ships that are naval landing craft. For Russia that would be the Ropucha-class. Each of these ships can carry about 10 tanks and about 310 troops (per ship).

So how many of these ship does Russia have? Hundreds, right? Nope: 11. Thats it. So assuming a full load of every ship thats about 110 tanks and about 3500ish troops. And all of that assumes all 11 ships will make it alive to US soil.

This is just how crazy this Russian claim of taking US States is.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to make actual Kremlin policy seem sane and moderate to the domestic audience.

NoIWontPickAName,

You forget that Alaska is like 2 miles from Russia

carbrewr84,

Where is Russia 2 miles from Alaska? It's about 50ish miles. Last I checked, it's also not a great place to start a ground invasion. The US could blow the shit out of that area of Alaska and nothing much would be missed.

NoIWontPickAName,

Is it that far? You can see Russia from alaska

BeautifulMind,
@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world avatar

Where is Russia 2 miles from Alaska?

The international border goes between the islands of little and big Diomede. Both of these islands are remote from land in either direction, and they are situated about midway in the narrowest part of the Bering Strait.

Since you asked where, here it is on a map

Yep, that’s pretty close, but nope, that’s not really tactically meaningful.

not_that_guy05,

He’s talking about California. He understands taking Alaska and Hawaii, but cali?

FordBeeblebrox,

Hmm, Pearl Harbor and the place where the 10th mountain train to fight in snow.

Ok Ivan, good luck. You’re gonna need it.

Professorozone,

Yeah, but we have Sarah Palin there to take care of it for us.

DragonTypeWyvern,

Bruh there’s so many gun nuts in Alaska that jerk off to Red Dawn it’ll be Winter War 2: Now With Air Support

Fedizen,

Also its alaska. Russia would be operating out of what, vladivastok maybe to take similarly shitty US ports in alaska.

If russia wants shitty coastal wilderness at uninhabitable climates they already have them.

partial_accumen,

I think you forget that we have 24 hour satellite surveillance all over the globe.

If you think Russia could send a large fraction of its blue water navy to one single point on the globe while also mustering all those troops and equipment on the ground in Russia beforehand without the US knowing about it weeks before hand, you don’t have a good grasp on the level of technology employed in today’s military.

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Well, there’s a remote island that belongs to Alaska that’s about two miles away from a remote island that belongs to Russia. You can swim across that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomede_Islands

I mean, I’m sure that Russia can get forces across that. They’ve got a military base on their little island, and we’ve got a small Native American village on our little island.

But then you’ve planted some number of forces on a strategically-irrelevant island in the Pacific. You’ve blown your largest advantage, surprise, and you’ve dumped however many people there, with a supply line that dictates that you need to support them by having ships sail up, while you just kicked off a war with a country with a much larger navy and air force.

And it’s not much of a springboard to a beachhead that you can use for land-based logistics, because there’s no infrastructure up there.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait_crossing

The Russian side of the strait, in particular, is severely lacking in infrastructure. No railways exist for over 2,800 kilometers (1,700 mi) in any direction from the strait.[24]

The nearest major connecting highway is the M56 Kolyma Highway, which is currently unpaved and around 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi) from the strait.[25] However, by 2042, the Anadyr Highway is expected to be completed connecting Ola and Anadyr, which is only about 600 kilometers (370 mi) from the strait.[26]

On the U.S. side, an estimated 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) of highways or railroads would have to be built around Norton Sound, through a pass along the Unalakleet River, and along the Yukon River to connect to Manley Hot Springs Road – in other words, a route similar to that of the Iditarod Trail Race. A project to connect Nome, 100 miles (160 km) from the strait, to the rest of Alaska by a paved highway (part of Alaska Route 2) has been proposed by the Alaskan state government, although the very high cost ($2.3 to $2.7 billion, about $5 million per mile, or $3 million per kilometer) has so far prevented construction.[27]

In 2016, the Alaskan road network was extended westwards by 50 miles (80 km) to Tanana, 460 miles (740 km) from the strait, by building a fairly simple road. The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities project was supported by local indigenous groups such as the Tanana Tribal Council.[28]

Transporter_Room_3,

I hate the US’s budget for defense. It’s insane. 1% of that could do so much better as social programs.

But every time someone starts talking about a foreign country invading the us it’s just… Unthinkable…

Not like “oh it will never happen, nobody would ever attack US soil again” because that’s just naive. We’ve stuck our noses in other people’s business to too long starting before any of us were alive.

But when people try to argue their point, they simply do not understand the scale of the problem.

You sum it up quite well.

Assuming you HAVE the element of surprise, which is unlikely given intelligence networks inside foreign borders, modern radar technology, observation posts scattered around antagonistic nations, sattelite surveillance… The list just goes on.

You are never getting an invasion force and supporting logistics to the united states (or any of the Americas) without the entire world knowing. You would have to build the largest hidden fleet of silent submarines the world has ever seen to get close.

Even if you magically defeated THE LARGEST navy and second largest air force, as well as the ACTUAL largest air force, you still have to deal with army, marines, coast guard, national guard, and honestly I think my local police department has equivalent equipment to what Russia runs in Ukraine. So add police to that.

And the number one problem when they somehow defeat all those will be the “more than one gun for every citizen” part. I myself have several mostly inherited ones, I know how to use them, and I’m confident in my ability to teach others how to use them effectively. And would happily do so in a foreign invasion. I won’t work for the military again but I’d be happy to defend my friends and family.

The hurdles for an invasion are high in most developed countries.

The us saw those hurdles, and decided “we need them at least 5x larger and made of titanium.” and went to work on the largest military in the world.

I may hate the budget, but ho boy does it make for some fun thought exercises when someone brings up foreign invasions.

pineapplelover,

Honestly, I kinda of disagree with people making the military budget their main argument. Iirc we also spend a fuck ton of money on healthcare and it’s not like we have free healthcare or anything, it goes to paying off people. We should focus more on getting rid of that corrupt system and using that money on education, infrastructure development, and research.

Alto,
Alto avatar

Even if the US military outright disappeared, I'm not convinced of Russias ability to occupancy much of anything considering gun ownership rates and the militarization of the police.

morphballganon,

They wouldn’t need magic. They’d just need a hamburder puppet President in office.

floofloof,

*hamberder. You give him too much credit.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Hmm.

I mean, it’s not gonna happen for other reasons (including the “Russia doesn’t have the naval and air forces to get control of the ocean required to have the ships cross it” point in the Vice article that I link to in another comment), but if we set that aside and assume a hypothetical world where Russia could get control of the sea and the air over the Pacific, I think that there’d be hypothetical ways to work around a limited number of landing ships.

The amphibious forces have to be able to seize and defend a port so that non-amphibious-assault ships get in.

So, the capacity is bounded by the time required to do a round trip to your staging point and the number of ships you have.

And there isn’t really any land nearby to use as a staging point.

But…you don’t actually have to reload at land. I mean, you could do ship-to-ship transfer, then have the landing ships do another run in from an offshore concentration of warships. If you really worked at it, you could probably get pretty good throughput.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment

They also have LCACs. Those can land forces on unimproved beaches as well.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aist-class_LCAC

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebed-class_LCAC

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsaplya-class_LCAC

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubr-class_LCAC

I assume that they can launch them from Ivan Gren-class LSDs. Maybe it’s possible to load them via crane or something to increase throughput, dunno what doctrine is.

They also have some ships that can carry helicopters, and can use that for insertion from offshore.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Naval_Aviation

And they have some landing craft of other sorts than what you mentioned; see the “landing craft” section:

en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_active_Russian_Navy_sh…

deafboy,
@deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

No. First you make the inhabitants ask russia for brotherly help. Invitation > invasion.

ILikeBoobies,

Well…once they consolidate their claim of Canada it will be easier

Squiddly,

Not to mention every other citizen is armed

ILikeBoobies,

That doesn’t matter at all

irreticent,
@irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

Not even a little bit? Okay…

ILikeBoobies,

If civilian gun ownership was enough to stop a military then the US would never have gotten a standing military. Like what the 2nd amendment was intended for

tal, (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Well, it did in the American Revolutionary War. But there hasn’t been much by way of countries seriously looking into invading the US over the centuries.

We do have one instance, though.

In World War I, Germany tried to get Mexico to invade the US, and offered to provide support in annexing part of the US.

Mexico’s leadership had the military examine the proposal. They advised against it. One of the cited rationales for not invading was the widespread gun ownership in the US.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

Mexican President Venustiano Carranza assigned a military commission to assess the feasibility of the Mexican takeover of their former territories contemplated by Germany. The generals concluded that such a war was unwinnable for the following reasons:

  • Mexico was in the midst of a civil war, and Carranza’s position was far from secure. (Carranza himself was later assassinated in 1920.) Picking a fight with the United States would have prompted the U.S. to support one of his rivals.
  • The United States was far stronger militarily than Mexico was. Even if Mexico’s military forces had been completely united and loyal to a single government, no serious scenario existed under which it could have invaded and won a war against the United States. Indeed, much of Mexico’s military hardware of 1917 reflected only modest upgrades since the Mexican-American War 70 years before, which the U.S. had won.
  • The German government’s promises of “generous financial support” were very unreliable. It had already informed Carranza in June 1916 that it could not provide the necessary gold needed to stock a completely independent Mexican national bank. Even if Mexico received financial support, it would still need to purchase arms, ammunition, and other needed war supplies from the ABC nations (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), which would strain relations with them, as explained below.
  • Even if by some chance Mexico had the military means to win a conflict against the United States and to reclaim the territories in question, it would have had severe difficulty conquering and pacifying a large English-speaking population which had long enjoyed self-government and was better supplied with arms than were most other civilian populations.
  • Other foreign relations were at stake. The ABC nations had organized the Niagara Falls peace conference in 1914 to avoid a full-scale war between the United States and Mexico over the United States occupation of Veracruz. Mexico entering a war against the United States would strain relations with those nations.

But, again, I think that all this misses the point. There isn’t going to be land warfare, much less militia warfare, against Russian land forces. Russia doesn’t have the means to transport forces from Russia to the US. The US has a considerably larger air force and navy, and an invasion fleet is going to run into that in the Pacific before it gets to California.

Transporter_Room_3,

NAVY stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself.

And after basic training and almost dying because of medical stuff unrelated to military service forced me out of the military, I took that to heart. Especially given who won the election in the years following my enlistment. No way was I going back. I’m still adamant to never reenlist, and I will always tell others NOT to enlist in the current US military unless major systemic changes are made so you don’t have to think to yourself “are we the baddies?” when in your bunk. I will happily tell anyone a recruiter is talking to about my experience, my family’s general military experience, and that with current volatility even if you agree with what they’re doing today, your enlistment will last longer than one administration and tomorrow you could be bombing Gaza and Ukraine right alongside other fascists.

All that said, If a foreign country invaded the us, you bet your ass I would be joining up with my ex-military friends for some good old fashioned minutemen militia. I’ve seen their equipment and what Russia is using in Ukraine. Russians would fail against well armed civilians (the ones who also have training, not just money).

The biggest flaw with Red Dawn isn’t that guerilla style combat tactics from teenagers and random adults could repel an enemy invasion coughvietnamcough, it’s that the enemy forces would never have made it to the mainland in such force in the first place.

uis,

after passing through the US Navy infested waters of the Atlantic or the Pacific.

It’s something about 4 kilometers from Russia to US. Or 86 km between mainlands.

Dreizehn,
Dreizehn avatar

If the asswipe Sergey said any red run shithole, like the Florida Oblast, Mississippi and Alabama, he can have them and MAGATs would not resist. California and Hawaii, the armed civilians would end the Muscovite invasion before the US military would show up. Fuck Russia and Slavs Ukraine.

tsonfeir,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Okay, so Alaska I get. Hawaii, well okay middle of nowhere, strategic location.

But California? The fuck? Good luck with that.

roguetrick,

Irredentist rhetoric in fascist media doesn't have to be logical.

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

But California? The fuck?

He’s listing the states where Russia has had territorial control at some point. Like, a “we controlled land once, so we can come back and take it” sort of thing.

en.wikipedia.org/…/Russian_colonization_of_North_…

Imperial Russia controlled Alaska prior to the Alaskan Purchase.

They also had three forts in Hawaii, and one fort in California.

HootinNHollerin,

Yes I’ve been to an old Russian fort on the coast in Northern California.

But really I’m pretty sure California could defeat Russia

tal,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Yes I’ve been to an old Russian fort on the coast in Northern California.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ross,_California

HootinNHollerin,

Yep that’s the one. They left because they basically killed all the otters off and the land wasn’t very good farming due to gophers etc.

BeautifulMind,
@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world avatar

I’m pretty sure California could defeat Russia

California has more blue-water navy in San Diego than Russia has in the world. It also has more air force stationed there than Russia has.

(granted, these are US forces, not California forces, but there is no real-world scenario right now in which California would face invasion without the full military support of United States and NATO)

tsonfeir,
@tsonfeir@lemm.ee avatar

Well, I’m sorry he has Seller’s Remorse. 🤗

dan1101,

The Mongols controlled Russia from around 1240 to 1481, a fairly long time. So Mongolia is entitled to the Russian lands.

werefreeatlast,

Best we can do is Montana, but we would like to flatten all of Russia first. That’s a deal that even ruzzia’s Zantanya would probably agree with. Mexico’s Santana took the deal LOL 🤣. I’m from Mexico and I can tell you it’s in the history books. It would be cool if you guys had your very own Zantanya chapter. Plus once the tree of you left move to new risky (former Montana) you would probably feel right at home.

Hey you said you got lithium and germanium? Yeah sounds like a good deal!

rimu, (edited )
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

Some random guest on Russian state TV wants that, according to a translation done by a Ukrainian. Newsweek then goes with "Russian State TV wants", implying endorsement of the idea by the Russian government.

Can you imagine if random Fox News guests were quoted as if they spoke for us? Obviously bullshit, right. That's what this is. Nothing on Russian TV can be taken at face value.

And it wasn't the host of the program that called it wishful thinking, it was the random guest himself only seconds later. Watch the video clip in the tweet embedded in the article to see it.

Trash journalism, Newsweek. But they knew it'd get clicks because apparently I'm the only person here who spent 25 seconds to watch the video and another 25 seconds to think. We need do better than this, people.

The real interesting bit is the "We'll clean them", salivating about ethnic cleansing of all non-Russians. It was a different voice than the guest - I think THAT might have been the host but I can't tell as I don't recognize the people involved.

rimu,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

To sum up:

  1. Russian TV airs some bullshit.
  2. Ukrainian propagandist carefully selects a tiny segment, puts it into whatever context suits him. Provides translation which no one checks.
  3. US rag misquotes segment and misattributes statements.
  4. We sound off on social media.

Bullshit from start to finish.

muse,
muse avatar

We'll give you Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas. Final offer.

eran_morad,

Pretty sure LAPD could waste the blyats.

morphballganon,

Because their massive guts would just absorb the invaders’ Kalashnikov rounds?

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