24 comments

  • apt-get 1 hour ago
    Just days after a similar (criminal) incident causing a train to derail in France: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/09/12/french-p...

    "close to Renault's factory in the town of Cléon", which is now preparing to start manufacturing drones for the French military, in collaboration with Ukrainian military-industrial groups.

    • peri-cl 19 minutes ago
      I don't think they look similar, the synchronicity notwithstanding. The sabotage in France was a 250–300 kg rail fragment (per your link). The objects in the Netherlands look much smaller, and look like they're intended to short-circuit two rails to trigger a signal fault. In one place they found car jumper cables with clamps attached to both rails,

      https://nos.nl/video/2631081-startkabels-van-spoor-bij-meppe... ("Startkabels van spoor bij Meppel weggehaald")

      • apt-get 13 minutes ago
        Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.
        • sandos 11 minutes ago
          Exactly this, and also they are trying to keep some deniability here, so variations are good.
      • fakedang 13 minutes ago
        Sabotage is sabotage, doesn't have to be the same down to the minutae to be called similar.
    • Someone 20 minutes ago
      > Just days after a similar (criminal) incident causing a train to derail in France

      From what I read, the similarity ends in “both involved trains”. This chain of attacks seems to have used short metal pipes (“Footage published by Dutch public broadcaster NOS on Tuesday showed police carrying what appeared to be metal pipes - about 1.5 metres (5ft) long”) to short a connection, making safety systems signal “there’s a train there”, stopping trains further up the track.

      The France incident involved a piece of rails heavy enough to cause derailment (“The rail fragment was estimated to weigh between 250 and 300 kilograms”)

      My money is on this being a rogue farmers protest.

      • rwyinuse 0 minutes ago
        Rogue farmers paid by Russia maybe.
    • walrus01 51 minutes ago
      Most consumers know Renault as an ordinary car manufacturer but also worth mentioning it's a major manufacturer of armored vehicles for the French armed forces.
    • puttycat 37 minutes ago
      Yes. And in combination it completely rules out the suggestion that the Netherlands attack is some kind of local activist protest. (The France attack resulted in several grave injuries and could have just as easily resulted in dozens of deaths.)
    • paganel 2 minutes ago
      "Live by the sword, die by the sword", meaning that the Western-European military alliance should also become aware of the consequences of being involved in a war against Russia, there's no hiding behind the bush anymore since they've started doing that. And before anyone starts crying: "These are civilian targets!", which would be true, I'd remind them that the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets.
    • aaron695 3 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • Kim_Bruning 1 hour ago
    So today's the yearly presentation of the new budget, with protests expected in several places. Whether this sabotage campaign is (part of a) misguided protest action or something else is yet to be determined.

    https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-nog-steeds-nieuwe-sabotageac... (Use google translate to read)

    • Vinnl 42 minutes ago
      That does mean that I would not automatically jump to conclusions about Russia or war or whatever; since much of national public policy is presented today, it's also a popular day to express disagreement, and apparently some farmers had already announced they would be doing so today.

      (I'd assume the BBC reporter to be aware that Prinsjesdag is today, and that they'd mention that fact in this article, but apparently not.)

      • libertine 1 minute ago
        You'll find the answer in who is organizing these groups.
    • qwertox 59 minutes ago
      • teekert 41 minutes ago
        "Radical Farmer Leaders" are mentioned as stimulating these actions today.
    • whazor 36 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • sorenjan 1 hour ago
    A Russian warship fired flares at a Danish military helicopter in international waters in the Baltic sea too.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwn8mjl31p5yo

    • hagbard_c 54 minutes ago
      Yes, a dangerous provocation which - had the helicopter been hit - could have led to serious consequences.

      Also, very much unlikely to be related to the issue of activists sabotaging the Dutch railways. There's hardly a weekend which goes by without some activist group doing something stupid in the Netherlands, often 'climate' activists but sometimes others - 'palestine' being another popular 'cause'. In a Dutch newspaper there was a suggestion that this was related to upcoming actions by farmers but I doubt it, they tend to be more rational in their activism by taking to the motorways in their tractors to slow down (or stop) traffic.

      • crote 49 minutes ago
        Of those, the "tractors on highways" is the only one which has resulted in someone dying. So much for rational...
        • phoghed 28 minutes ago
          Driving is dangerous business. We tend to forget since it’s so commonplace and integral to our lives. Cars have gotten much safer though, no longer the top cause of TBI in the US
      • preuceian 44 minutes ago
        The climate activists mostly do something stupid like obstructing traffic, unlike the farmers, who obstruct traffic in a way you apparently consider rational.
      • teekert 45 minutes ago
        I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".

        [0] https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-brand-langs-sne...

        • hagbard_c 12 minutes ago
          The NOS is not the most unbiased news source in the Netherlands which is unfortunate. If it is indeed 'radical farm leaders' who are behind these sabotage actions they have turned up the temperature quite a bit and stand to lose a lot of support from the public. It would be a strange thing to do since there is not much overlap between farming and railways in the Netherlands, a small country with a strong agricultural sector which' products mostly travel by road, water and air.
    • dakolli 1 hour ago
      [flagged]
      • cyclopeanutopia 57 minutes ago
        Russia is involved in many acts of sabotage in Europe over past 2 or 3 years, so this is a very natural first guess for us, European citizens. They also started increasing their activity recently.
        • shakna 51 minutes ago
          Today is also Prinsjesdag. So pissed off Dutch is more likely. As it has been, for the last three years running with highways getting blocked on this day...
          • markvdb 6 minutes ago
            One, the other, or a mix of both! If I were a foreign agent wanting to sow chaos, I'd look for the easy to press buttons. Encouraging pissed-off Dutch citizens would be an obvious part of the plan.
        • IhateAI 52 minutes ago
          [dead]
        • retinaros 47 minutes ago
          [flagged]
          • junon 14 minutes ago
            Do you live in Germany?
        • ImHereToVote 52 minutes ago
          Like what? Any confirmed acts?
        • crazybonkersai 44 minutes ago
          Except that none of cases were proven. For one, recent attempts to blow up power lines in Germany were done by a German individual. Or remember how Russia was accused for blowing up Nord Stream. It never made any sense, but still European politicians and Western media fiercely pushed this narrative.

          Get some critical media literacy and stop listening to NAFO trolls.

          • cbg0 34 minutes ago
            Where are you getting the "correct" narrative from?
            • crazybonkersai 16 minutes ago
              By reading multiple sources by different parties and thinking for yourself. Truth is the first casualty of war.
              • piva00 4 minutes ago
                That's the usual trope used as an escape for the question: where are your sources?

                Provide them or stop being so defensive about it, being defensive just shows you got not substance to your claim. Show, don't tell, if you can't show then you might have to do some more thinking by yourself to figure out why you ended up that way.

          • icantevenhold 13 minutes ago
            None of the cases were proven is a bold claim.

            It’s hard to prove these things of course but you have to ask yourself who benefits most from these kind of attacks and sabotage? Who benefits from a weakened and infighting Europe?

            Hybrid warfare is by definition hard to attribute

          • cyclopeanutopia 36 minutes ago
            [flagged]
            • phoghed 24 minutes ago
              You’re better off just giving them a news article or something, because “many such cases” is basically a meme
      • bilekas 1 hour ago
        They have a habit of being involved. It's not exactly plucked out of thin air!
      • rebolek 52 minutes ago
        I'm trained by Russian occupation of my country.
      • smodo 54 minutes ago
        There are some indications that make Russian saboteurs a very likely culprit. It would be unwise to look at every occurrence of sabotage as a singular incident in the context of the ongoing campaign against European political stability.

        https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025/01/research-e...

        https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/sabotage-deutschland-bka...

      • retinaros 48 minutes ago
        I knew before clicking it will be one of the things they say. people are sheeps. they will say whatever they think is right up to a limit. then they will break this limit and punish everyone that is deviating from it. this is what happened in nazi germany, soviet union, china and in the US under biden and I can already see the premises of the next term of US presidency through the lindsay clancy reaction from millions of women. to me it feels like we broke this limit in the modern developed world now. sad that as humans we cant use our brains for better than following what our hiveminds say is truth
        • cicko 32 minutes ago
          Right. Instead, we should do whatever someone writes in an anonymous forum.
      • markus_zhang 46 minutes ago
        Who did it is irrelevant. The more important thing is who the propaganda is blaming. Then we know what the elites (behind this piece of propaganda) want.
      • scrollop 15 minutes ago
        [flagged]
    • sedan_baklazhan 37 minutes ago
      [flagged]
      • krige 34 minutes ago
        Shouldn't you be on the frontline, Ivanushka? Or is this how you can avoid getting drafted?
      • 9865322689965 34 minutes ago
        [dead]
  • HelloUsername 58 minutes ago
    Might be related to today's yearly 'Prinsjesdag' in the Netherlands:

    The day on which the reigning monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States-General of the Netherlands (consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives) to give the Speech from the Throne (Dutch: Troonrede), similar to the annual State of the Union in the United States or the British State Opening of Parliament. This speech sets out the main features of government policy for the coming parliamentary session.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prinsjesdag

    • alienbaby 43 minutes ago
      maybe, but it's a step or two up from blocking roads?
  • walrus01 55 minutes ago
    And on the same day that a (very likely Russian) UAV had to be shot down in Lithuanian air space.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo

  • Muximize 22 minutes ago
    Farmers protesting new nitrogen emissions regulation. They are also setting hay bales on fire next to highways. The rail sabotage is relatively harmless, the tracks use block signalling so if you use a conductive metal bar or jumper cables to connect the rails, the system thinks a train is present and the preceding signal will stay red.
  • nelox 38 minutes ago
    I would be surprised if it wasn’t by Russia. Russian infrastructure is being systematically destroyed by Ukraine with funding, training, intelligence and materiel from Europe. This is an attempt to discourage European support by disrupting Europeans.
    • pprotas 30 minutes ago
      Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.
      • Zagitta 13 minutes ago
        Farmers and right wing people in all of Europe are actively being disinformed by Russian intelligence service and either wilfully ignores it or too incompetent to realize it.
        • pprotas 7 minutes ago
          We are all being disinformed, whether it's by a foreign or our own government. This is not a problem unique to Europe, right-wingers, farmers or Russia. The goal is to have us fight while the powerful become even more powerful. It is important to be aware of this fact, it is not just "the other side I don't agree with" that are affected, and thinking of them as willfully ignorant or incompetent is what the powerful would like you to think (infighting is the goal).

          You are right in the sense that there is likely an underlying meddling causing these farmers to act this way. It does not excuse their actions.

    • kaon_2 32 minutes ago
      Ockham's razor may be? Big protests are common on Prinsjesdag, particularly when sensitive decisions or policies are made. A local protest organisation is therefore significantly more likely than an organized foreign sabotage. If I were Putin and had foreign agents in the Netherlands I certainly wouldn't expose them this physically.
  • CrzyLngPwd 7 minutes ago
    Came for the news for nerds, got a blog from the BBC propaganda machine.

    Anyway, I am surprised the BBC blogger didn't add north koreans and some linked it to porn on the internet.

  • antonmks 39 minutes ago
    I am not saying that Russia was behind this, but 99% likely.
  • kaon_2 26 minutes ago
    Sad to see so many people here in the comments jump the gun and think of Russia.

    Some local context: Today is "prinsjesdag" when the budget is announced. Protests are common, particularly when sensitive decisions are made. There are multiple organized protest movements in the country that have used physical force in the past and some of them had announced protests for today.

    Could it be Russia? Yes. But local protests seem significantly more likely. Moreover, if I were Putin I wouldn't expose my foreign agents this physically. I would use them in much more insidious ways such as actually starting or supporting these protest movements. In a similar vein: Could any shooting in the US be caused by foreign agents? Maybe. But usually there is a much simpler explanation; guns and bitterness.

  • sedan_baklazhan 38 minutes ago
    Browsing through comments I'm not really surprised. It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily. Guys, your railroads used to work very bad all the way along. Just fix them at last, and ensure safety.
  • amelius 48 minutes ago
    Makes you think. If Russia can get a bunch of teenagers to put pipes on the railway tracks or fly some drones near an airport, then so can AI.
    • venzaspa 0 minutes ago
      It's surprisingly cheap to recruit a few mugs to cause a bit of havoc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_arson_attacks_against_Kei...
    • raverbashing 43 minutes ago
      It's not a "bunch of teenagers", a regular pipe won't cause a train to derail, one would need heavy machinery to move that rail in France
      • Bootvis 37 minutes ago
        Nothing was derailed, they put pipes on the rails that tricked the system into believing there was a train on the track, shutting it down
    • XorNot 29 minutes ago
      This is very much why I find most people's AI doom scenarios trite.

      Humans are useful, easily manipulated operatives in the medium AIs are conversant in and we already have evidence of agents doing exactly this in arguing for PR requests (likely with prompting by an operator but still).

  • NietTim 25 minutes ago
    It should be noted that today is Prinsjesdag and the new yearly budget is being presented, or however that is properly translated in english. Especially now that farmers are also lighting hay bales on fire next to highways the most likely explanation is nationals doing this
  • cynicalsecurity 26 minutes ago
    Europeans don't realise how close war is to their homes. Russia won't stop unless it's stopped.
    • gambiting 15 minutes ago
      Define Europeans - us Poles absolutely understand the danger. In fact I'd say we're already at war with Russia, the way they attack our democracy, our institutions and politics daily. But someone in Portugal might not see it the same way we do.
  • igleria 21 minutes ago
    I'm starting to be a little worried about what Putin has planned for Europe.
    • scrollop 15 minutes ago
      A desperate megalomaniac is a dangerous thing.
  • bamboozled 47 minutes ago
    The little green men
  • anovikov 23 minutes ago
    Well this is natural, terrorism in Europe is almost entirely Russia-originating (and have always been, see drop to nearly zero after 1991 when Russia lost the capability).
  • barrenko 1 hour ago
    As a european, for the love of god, can we address any single of our concerns by either the national or the supranational government?

    It seems as if one ambiguates the other.

    • HPsquared 55 minutes ago
      It's useful because if an issue is difficult, both levels can disavow responsibility.
      • HSO 49 minutes ago
        in german there is a word for this

        Zuständigkeitspingpong

        competence table tennis

        • ramblerman 30 minutes ago
          Sry to be pedantic (it is german after all) but,

          "responsibility table tennis" would be a better fit.

          Competence in english translates to the skill side of the word

        • myself248 41 minutes ago
          > in german there is a word for this

          I am not surprised.

          > competence table tennis

          Magnificent!

    • BoxOfRain 23 minutes ago
      > It seems as if one ambiguates the other.

      Interestingly this mechanism contributed a lot to Brexit in my opinion, whenever there was legislation the politicians wanted to enact but knew would be unpopular with the voters they'd blame the EU and wring their hands saying there was nothing to be done, while in the background gold-plating the legislation far beyond what the EU was even asking for. This also made it easy for populists to point to many absurd examples of the EU being comically bureaucratic, when a lot of the more nonsensical ones were literally domestic additions. When the referendum happened, the consequences were obvious to everyone.

      While no Brexiteer myself, I personally would want to see the European Parliament get a lot more powers and influence before I threw my wholehearted support behind rejoining. Half the problem with the EU is that it's seen as not particularly democratic as a place for legislation to originate, and giving the elected organ more power (including the power to propose legislation in its own right, and dismiss legislation proposed by the Commission with much more prejudice) would go a long way to addressing that I think. The Parliament needs to be more, well, parliamentary in how it functions.

    • raverbashing 43 minutes ago
      No, it seems governments can only ignore the concerns then complain the 'alt-right' parties get voted
    • 9865322689965 32 minutes ago
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  • scrollaway 1 hour ago
    Little by little, people are realising that Europe is at war. Politicians are trying so hard not to say it because of the implications, but there’s only so long you can keep your head buried in the sand.

    We’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…

    I’m sick of it.

    • maxboone 1 hour ago
      We don't know whether this was Russia, it's just as likely it was the "farmers defence force" or climate activists.

      Edit: some context as I'm looking like a Russian shill now, which I understand. Today is the day that the budget gets announced, and the farmer terrorist organization (farmer defence force) have announced actions - and have disrupted highways by setting bales of hay on fire, and all the disruptions happened where farmer concentrations are high.

      Regardless, the situation is dire, and probably either the tankies or terror farmers are being helped by Russian destabilizing forces, it's too early to call this disruption an action from the FSB.

      • toasty228 1 hour ago
        In the case of France it is pretty obvious, they would never attack random people in such a way. They either target public infrastructure or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people, and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.
        • cucumber3732842 4 minutes ago
          >or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people,

          I don't know enough about dutch politics but in my country if the blue collar anti-regulation people wanted to annoy the white collar pro-regulation people without annoying other blue collar people stopping the trains would accomplish that pretty handily.

          >and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.

          They laid pipes and jumper cables across the tracks causing the signals to be red.

      • CalRobert 43 minutes ago
        Those famously anti-train climate activists…
        • f_devd 34 minutes ago
          Farmer advocates are not climate activists, surprisingly they have a negative correlation
      • n4r9 1 hour ago
        Don't you think those groups would have claimed responsibility by now?
        • hhh 58 minutes ago
          no? if you are diligent you can say nothing and people will hopefully attribute it to your enemies and you get off with your own ploy of looking peaceful and harmless
          • n4r9 48 minutes ago
            In which case what do they gain here?
            • toyg 10 minutes ago
              You can claim ownership via restricted channels, e.g. a phone call to key politicians, and rely on their self-interest to keep things quiet while understanding the threat.

              In some cases, if the action is a bit too effective, you might even want to avoid it being pinned on you. Al Qaeda occasionally refused to claim ownership of things they very plainly did, and the Russians do it very often (e.g. when they shot down a Dutch passenger plane a few years ago).

      • wickedsight 1 hour ago
        Yeah, my bet is on the farmers. The locations where this happened are all pretty rural and farmers have announced havy actions today.

        We in NL need to be more concerned about domestic terrorism than the Russians at the moment. Though I'm sure Russian money and bots are involved in some way.

        • ricardobeat 55 minutes ago
          You think farmers are willing to risk the murder of hundreds of their fellow countrymen as a form of protest? That’s plain terrorism.
          • bo0tzz 43 minutes ago
            Yes, they've already murdered people by causing accidents on the highway.
        • maxboone 1 hour ago
          Definitely, and destabilizing by proxy is still an attack
      • j-pb 1 hour ago
        Ah yes, climate activists are widely known for hating public transport especially trains.
        • maxboone 1 hour ago
          I wouldn't say they are widely known for hating the electric grid but hey here we are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_arson_attack_on_the_Berli...
          • crote 51 minutes ago
            Climate activists are definitely known for disliking fossil fuel plants - and there's one directly next to that.

            I could see an activist naïvely thinking that this would sever that one power plant from the grid, making a clear anti-fossil statement. Still a bit of an odd choice (it's gas-powered, Germany has far dirtier lignite-powered ones), but not unthinkable.

      • mschuster91 1 hour ago
        if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

        Russia started with the hybrid war psyops shit, they don't get to complain about false accusations.

        • maxboone 1 hour ago
          I'm not defending Russia, it's just that the farmers terrorist organisation has announced major disruptions today and has also set hay bales on fire to shut down highways.

          For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.

        • on_the_train 1 hour ago
          We've had a bunch of these acts of terrorism in Germany in the recent years. Mostly power, but also train and industrial targets. They all came from the same source, which is very much not Russian.
      • boesboes 1 hour ago
        uhu, sure thing boris!
    • crote 1 hour ago
      It is indeed possible Russia is behind it, but considering a domestic farmers' terror group has told its followers to cause disruption today (as it is a politically-significant day), and those are definitely disrupting highways, chances are good they are also responsible for the railway disruptions.

      And if this is supposed to be war, then by European standards it is incredibly mild.

    • alexejb 20 minutes ago
      I think of it the other way: EU politicians want war but are not able to say it out loud and clear. Instead we get a bunch of "russian sabotage" all over the place with flimsy evidence to back it. Get the simple people into a paranoid state and use it to justify decisions which are already made. Classic FUD. And the people seem to swallow it.
    • dividedbyzero 49 minutes ago
      And Russia is winning, they already have neutralized if not subjugated the US, but most of Europe is also heading towards that outcome, and fast. Russia is not this near omnipotent 5D chess mastermind behind all of the scenes in all of politics all across the West, but they are terrifyingly good at exploiting existing trends and influencing trajectories just so and they have been at it with great continuity over many decades. It's starting to really pay off. At this point, it's hard to imagine how the next German federal government could be anything else than either a completely dead-on-arrival coalition of polar opposites that only barely hangs on to keep the AfD out of government but will be unable to do anything at all, or an extremely Russia-friendly government the AfD is part of if not leads that is pretty much certain to continue within the EU what Trump started within NATO. Both outcomes serve Russia well, and the establishment has pretty much handed them that opportunity without meaningful resistance.
    • jeltz 1 hour ago
      What implications? Why wouldn't they want an, in this case real, external enemy they could use to distract the people from their own failures?
      • stingraycharles 1 hour ago
        Perhaps the external enemy being able to do these things is, in fact, their own failure in a way.
        • jeltz 1 hour ago
          Not really, I do not buy that. Ukrainian intelligence can sabotage train tracks deep within Belarus and Russia. And given how convient it would be to blame Russia here I wonder why they do not.
    • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
      Yeah, not sure why not at least being upfront about the possibility is so hard. In Spain we've had train derailments, flocks of people being directed on social media to force themselves across borders, subterfuge deluxe everywhere and what not, yet the government is mostly silent and claim it's all unrelated, but it's hard to not also see the parallels across the continent and reach your own conclusions. But then also, don't wanna fall into some conspiracy theory trap either...
      • crote 59 minutes ago
        Russia isn't the only group interested in doing terrorism in The Netherlands. Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion have caused far greater disruption.

        Could it be Russia? Obviously. But in my opinion the odds are less than a coin flip.

        • embedding-shape 58 minutes ago
          > Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion

          Why derail trains though, especially in regards to the latter? Given it's one of the most environmental ways for transportation. Besides, groups like that tend to want to take responsibility, the whole point is to get attention to their groups.

          • maxboone 54 minutes ago
            You're assuming rational goals instead of thinking in radical acts of terrorism.

            Throwing paint at a painting does not help the environment, but it does create radical flank effects.

            Blocking the highways does not help agriculture, but it does bring their problems in other people's home / discourse.

            • embedding-shape 49 minutes ago
              You're misunderstanding why they do those things in the first place. You're referencing real activities here, how many of those activities you references people refused to take responsibility for doing?

              Look at photos from these events you refer to, people are proudly holding banners and signs here, not trying to be anonymous and flee from police and intelligence services.

              Have you never participated in political activism yourself, and you have no clue why you'd do those things you cite?

              • toyg 8 minutes ago
                It's a spectrum. You derail a train and nobody gets hurt? Shout it from the rooftops! You derail a train and people die? "Wasn't me, guv."
          • crote 47 minutes ago
            Stop, not derail. The saboteurs aren't physically damaging the railways: they are shorting the rails together, causing a fake train to be detected.

            But indeed, XR is the least likely subject. They have stopped trains before, but that was a human barricade, and it was a coal train.

  • aerodog 26 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • AmericanOP 56 minutes ago
    Putin’s exit narrative requires escalation. Defeat vs Ukraine is a pathetic wound- “we would have won if it weren’t for.. europe” is preferable to narcissistic permanent victimhood.

    Solovyov propaganda is pure nuclear revenge fantasy: https://youtu.be/dA4RP3uID6Q?is=ApmFQtgZvY7mWajP

  • NicoJuicy 52 minutes ago
    And Putin has trump in his pocket. Some oligarch just had to pay a couple of big bucks for his sons wedding...

    https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-wedding-b...

  • bsoqk 34 minutes ago
    Putin must be really happy - whatever happens in Europe, he's blamed for it, making him look omnipotent. Most countries would love to have that kind of power.

    It’s so much more likely to be the farmers, but it's easier to blame Putin and do nothing about it than it is to stop ruining the farmers and risk angering the cosmopolitan politicians whose votes in the parliament you need.

    • alexejb 15 minutes ago
      Putin became a meme. He's almighty and weak at the same time. He's the Zar, Stalin AND Hitler in one person. He's been cloned at least a dozen times but seems to have a grave illness and will die soon. On the one hand it's funny to watch how people are losing their minds over it but on the other it just prevents a clear dialogue and assessment of a politician.
    • cindyllm 30 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • assimpleaspossi 53 minutes ago
    I don't understand. What does this have to do with HN, the typical topics, and the typical users who come here?
    • n4r9 46 minutes ago
      International politics is intellectually stimulating.
    • CalRobert 42 minutes ago
      Nerds like trains. A fair few of us live in NL too.
    • pbkompasz 39 minutes ago
      I think AI was mentioned in the article...
    • rebolek 52 minutes ago
      By the upvotes - a lot.
      • hagbard_c 39 minutes ago
        Yes, and that's one of the reasons politics - which this is - used to be shunned on this site. It is like catnip for those who have an opinion - whether agreeing or disagreeing - on the subject and quickly turns into a mud fight. In combination with the down-voting system on HN this gives rise to a strong and unhelpful herd mentality where those with itchy down-vote fingers quickly make opinions outside of their desired narrative fade to grey. Unfortunately this 'no politics' rule has never been free from bias even before the rise of The Orange Man and seems to have been dropped off the radar ever since. This only serves to increase the level of polarisation, the bitter fruits of which are ripe for the picking right here in this thread.