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There's been thousands and thousands of volunteers from Western countries. Probably under 10k, overall though.
In March, Russians almost killed perhaps 500 westerners in a cruise missile attack; luckily, the missile aimed at the actual barracks building was apparently one of the few that got shot down by air defence. (this was said by the soldier in the recent video interview posted to the main page)
Russian MOD is saying so far they believe they've killed 300 Americans. (I'm wondering what time will tell)
Yeah, I'm thinking there probably aren't consequences, it's all who/whom as usual.
Sure, Western countries "aren't at war' with Russia, but somehow, billions of dollars in weapons and lots of qualified military personnel end up fighting Russia in Ukraine.
Mhmm. Could be a bit more egregious, the West could just start sending entire military units over, volunteer soldiers signing up, equipment and everything just gifted. Next level after that is Russia's "polite men".
I figured the logical next-step from a certain five sided building would be to get a law passed, reasonable and neutral on its face, the Lafayette Law. The Lafayette Law would enable the Secretary of State to maintain a list declaring countries friendly or unfriendly, and allow US servicemen in time of peace to apply for a leave of absence to serve in the military of any friendly country that is at war, provided that the serviceman can demonstrate a personal family connection to the country. Arguments in favor will be that it is to maintain discipline, asking Ukrainian-descended servicemen to sit on their asses at an Air Force base in Wichita while their cousins are getting murdered is a tough ask, better to create a formal pathway for them to take leave rather than have them desert. Historically, tie it to Lafayette and Pulaski and Von Steuben, the foreigners without whom the American Revolution would have failed.
No big deal, how many Ukrainians are in the US marines anyway? And how many will want to take leave? Well, when the Pentagon writes the actual regulations, they decide that having a Ukrainian fiancee counts as family connections. And after all, who doesn't meet online these days? Especially a guy on a remote military base? And hey, it is only fair, that soldiers who fight in Ukraine get to keep advancing their seniority, might even get promotions because you've seen how they function in action.
So you get 10,000 marines volunteering to fight in Ukraine, who all have online LDRs with some Ukrainian chatbot with pretty pictures to back it up. And because the process above takes months, there is no one moment when Russia really has credibility to say this is an escalation. Just one squad at a time, soldiers keep showing up.
Well, that's one way of preventing an AI catastrophe - slowly but surely escalate a regional proxy war into less proxy war, then to an actual war between big powers..
Why would Russia escalate to a war they'll lose over a few marine volunteers when they haven't escalated over the entirety of the NSA/CIA/DIA/Military Intelligence/Air Force Surveillance apparatus being turned over to the Ukraine for their use? There's no good line to draw between war/not war.
Which is a super dangerous situation to be in long-term. The constitutional abdication of Congress refusing to declare war that has accelerated since the Bush administration, and this is only making it worse internationally. This kind of intelligence sharing and targeting is unacceptable, much more unacceptable than little green/blue men.
Maybe escalation is tied more to overall level of US involvement rather than the slope of the increase.
But perhaps they're escalating.
What if (pure speculation) the recent infrastructure attacks in the US are due to Russian involvement?
There's a lot of discontent on the US right; a few operatives goading and advising the right people could do a lot of damage.
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If such law would be passed I bet that you would not even need a chatbot - I expect that there would be enough interest on both sides (ranging from treating it as actual relationship to very thinly disguised prostitution).
I mean, I think what I'm clearly suggesting isn't that the Marines are seduced by an AI chatbot, rather that if asked to produce documentation that Pentagon would produce big chat transcripts between a Ukrainian woman and the Marine in question. Which is just a piece of comedy, I'm not sure they'd even bother producing it. Actually dating or marrying a Ukrainian woman is sorta orthogonal to the whole exercise, the goal is to send 10,000 Marines into Ukraine without ever saying you're sending 10,000 Marines into Ukraine. Ballpark, I bet you'd get 1/10 Marines to volunteer if it counts towards their service and promotions.
It would be really tough for Russia to pinpoint where that crosses the line and escalate against the USA. Hell, I'd say it's significantly less of an escalation than the USA/NATO handing over their entire back-office intelligence work to the UKR army. But because that happened one step at a time, there was no moment where Russia was firmly able to say "nope, you do that and there's war."
I think that's called salami tactics and it seems that they've both been playing that game
The issue with it is that once you start sending Americans in a war zone you will have boxed Americans coming back.
I know the American military has already been doing that. Back in 2015 an acquaintance of mine was asked if they wanted to 'help train' close to Crimea...
The issue is that the American government and military leadership already have a hard time finding recruits.
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Yes, obviously.
Though if for some reason they would do this - they likely could do without lying in that part.
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That is typical proxy war, NATO is definitely not fighting directly.
Also, they cannot be at war. At most in "a special military operation". After all, Putin said that it is not a war :)
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If you're going to get into semantics about it, Russia isn't "at war" either. So it seems kind of silly of you (or anyone else) to complain about people taking sides.
Though, as George S Patton and Robert A Heinlein both famously observed, someone who buys it in a police action (or "special military operation") is just as dead as someone killed in a war.
De-facto, Russia is at war.
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