> Do we want to fight this war on someone else's soil or on ours?

Russia thought so too.

What do you mean? There was never any question of attacking Russia and fighting any war on their soil. Nobody in their right mind would attack a country with the 2nd largest army and nuclear weapons. The war in Ukraine definitely made this army still very weak, but, except Ukraine defending itself, I don't see anyone rushing to attack Russia anytime soon. It makes no sense now and made no sense before they invaded Ukraine. There is nothing to win by attacking Russia and a lot to lose.

> with the 2nd largest army

By what metric?

Global Firepower maintains a database and is a popular reference: https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-de...

But I saw several people criticizing their relatively high position on this chart given high incompetence and losses.

EDIT: Apparently this website doesn't follow any rigorous methodology. So basically the only thing their army is 2nd in the world is the nominal number of nukes (hopefully most of them don't work).

The best way to 'attack' Russia is to undermine its economic and political systems then let unrest amongst its citizenry do the dirty work. 1917 showed Russia's proletariat was very effective at achieving regime change.

How do you undermine the economic and political system of a country? The economic one can be undermined by sanctions, and they happened only because the war - before that the West was happy to send billions to Russia. The political one seems quite stable, Putin had a few decades to cement it and make sure nobody takes it to the streets, and if someone is brave enough to do it, they will be quickly pacified. He is switching the internet on and off and there is no sign of Russians reacting like Iranians.

I thought Iran situation is more about sharia than youtube cat videos.

It's not, the current protests are mainly about economic harshness.

> This is the reason why Europe is so focused on helping Ukraine BTW.

We aren't that focused actually. France produced close to zero 155mm shells in 2023 because the producer (les forges de Tarbes) couldn't pay its suppliers due to liquidity issues. That could have been solved by a phone call to the national investment bank (BPI) but lasted 9 months because we don't take things too seriously.

Another example is how negligible was the war in Ukraine in the debate about the government budget for the past two years. If we were serious about helping Ukraine we should be spending so much money it would become a priority topic in budget debates, but it's not the case at all.

I'm deeply disappointed about how complacent we have been for the past 4 years.