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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1067 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 25, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Drones are being a bother around Scandinavian airports. Russian culpability is suspected.

If it was Russia, and it may well have been, given the reports that these were not typical hobby drones + they were "flown in a highly capable manner"...

Are Russia trying to send the message that they will be able to kick various Europeans right in the testicles if the war becomes hot(tter)? "We'll take down your passenger planes", and the like? "We've got agents ready to harm various undefended and under-defended soft spots"?

And/or they might be trying to make NATO countries spend on/deploy anti air defenses at home instead of in Ukraine...

Mystery drones have been lurking around airports and nuclear plants for years, prior to the war. May be Russia, may be some other source.

As far as I know it's never been proven that any such drones are real and not misidentified planes, birds, etc.

I'd bet a decent chunk are idiots with cheap DJI or equivalent drones not following the rules. But probably not all of them.

Are Russia trying to send the message that they will be able to kick various Europeans right in the testicles if the war becomes hot(tter)?

I'm not sure who this message would be addressed to. EU military, unless they are hiring literally idiots, already knows what drones are, and saw how Ukraine and Israel used them to perform deep-inside attacks. Deducing Russia would be capable of doing the same, should they want it, is not something that needs any special messaging. The general public is not itching to have any conflict with Russia anyway - I mean, they don't like Russia, but they'd prefer to limit themselves to expressing grave concern and maybe sending some money to Ukraine (not too much), but that's the extent of it. And they certainly wouldn't understand this message anyway - it would require proven connection to Russia (which would be an act of war by then) to have it enter into normie awareness, or at least willingness of the press (which means of the government) to proclaim it so - in which case the normies would ask - if Russia is already attacking us, why you guys aren't doing squat? And nobody really wants these questions asked or answered.

It could be a test, or it could be just some local drone operators not giving a flying frick about any regulations and just YOLOing it around the airport. It's not like it takes a genius with 10 years of training to fly a hobby drone...

Lots of reasons. Testing defenses, intimidation, diversion of resources.

As an aside, I found out the Mexican cartels are apparently sending undercover sicarios to Ukraine to learn about drone warefare.

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