Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

This was a G. W. Bush idea, during his last year in office, and it was never going to actually happen.

At the dinner on Wednesday, the German and French position was supported by Italy, Hungary and the Benelux countries, a senior German official said. Mr. Bush was said to have accepted that his position was not going to prevail,

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html

> Was the EU and the USA friendly towards Russia ...

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, did Angela Merkel stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as very sensibly demanded by much of Eastern Europe? No, of course not - if we just trade more with Russia, they will be interested in peace! Germany deservedly lost billions finishing the construction, and it never transmitted a single ccm of gas.

> You know the result of that, but still consider there was no provocation at all

I think a better question to ask is, why do countries that border on Russia try so hard to become NATO members?

It threatens mobsters racket profits, but it will not start any actual fight.

It’s not a secret that Ukraine is vital for the ground defence of Russia, but the Ukrainian people are pro-EU, and not from propaganda. You might well remember that their government was essentially a puppet for Russia until they were ousted. So if Ukraine is radicalised it is odd to think that its because of European propaganda- more likely they got tired of their masters.

I fully accept that Putin thinks of NATO as a threat to Russia, and NATO is at the door.

Its also entirely true that the border countries (Estonia for example) have major anxiety regarding a Russian invasion, and actively seek NATO membership to avoid that.

However, flying aircraft into sovereign territory (as Russia often did and continues to do to Sweden) is not the behaviour of a threatened country, they are the ones making the threats, constantly testing.

Their expansions into territory under the guise of “going where there are native Russians” will necessarily conclude with border regions being even more hostile to any native Russians wanting to settle. Again, in Estonia, the city of Narva is almost entirely native Russian; but they don’t want to be under Putin. Putins actions make Estonians wary of this fact and makes the Estonian government wish to integrate these people more instead of letting them live their lives.

In the Ukraine this was true too, thats why there was such a push to get people speaking Ukrainian, but Putin saw that his claim to the territory gets weaker over time and decided to invade.

If you understand the incentives of all involved, it is plain to see that Putin is the architect of his own misery here.

It is the right of any sovereign country to freely join any military alliance, including NATO. The fact that this upsets Putin says more about him than the alliance and its (potential) members.

The counter-strategies that the British used to defend against German strikes included "switch off all the lights at night so they don't know where they are" and "order newspapers to lie about which part of the city was damaged in order that spies reading British newspapers and reporting back to HQ said missiles fell short/went too far, causing HQ to incorrectly compensate on the next strike". I don't know if the reverse was true, despite now living in Berlin.

Everyone's supply chains were also much shallower, and equipment much cruder and therefore easier to make (though also less efficient). Half of London or Berlin losing electricity makes a much smaller difference when far less was electrified in the first place, e.g. loss of electricity for a heat pump doesn't matter so much when the terraces and apartment blocks have internal fireplaces and regular coal deliveries.

Also re Vietnam, it took until 1997 to return to the per-person energy use it had in 1970: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/vietnam

And until 1993 to reach the not-adjusted-for-population level.

And the electricity graphs don't even go back far enough to see what that war was like, that's all energy.

If you succeed in attacking the grid, you achieve the same widespread industry impact, without the cost of the munitions.

It can take decades to recover from a cyber attack like this, if it succeeds.

I am not saying whether russians are doing it or not, im just saying that its not just victim blaming, and that anyone operating with this level of security is grossly negligant and should be severely punished as criminals