It makes sense to finally see Soviet presence.
Now there is something we should be asking ourselves.
So the weapons pack is American(U.S) not Soviet…so when it´s available are they going to put some outpost with dead U.S soldiers…or only in the future?
That is the question…
Is it just me, or this this light green color new ?
I’ve only seen it at the farm northwest of Boo, which seems to have been a big russian camp, so maybe those are suppossed to be russian trucks or a placeholder for them.
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They are here in force yes but is that force against fnix or the survivors? There’s evidence that the resistance and soviets fought side by side and face to face. I have 3 theories
-
a miscommunication began the battle of boo
The resistance see the soviets and assume they were behind the invasion, they open fire and after a short battle the resistance and soviets make amends -
A split in the resistañce or soviets
One side of the soviet force takes to gathering intel and machine tech while others value human life more so
Or the resistance splits into a pro soviet and anti soviet group -
is that the resistance and soviets started off helping each other, but some event soured relations enough to put them against eachother
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Maybe the “cultists” attacked the Soviets, they are also located nearby.
And at boo church cemetery there are lighten candles and a book(the bible i guess), the same book that the cultists are always seen with.
That is one possible narrative, resistance and soviets working together but the cultists destabilize that relation, the soviets thinking the “civilians” are all the same, not paying attention to weirdo’s with strange talks and suicide ways.
One wrong move is all it takes to begin the distrust.
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No it´s not just you, some trucks have a slight different green, Soviets i guess?
Altough being Soviet they should be white(snow camo) or brown and not green…but ok 
.
At first thought, It makes perfectly sense for the Russians to be present. Although, I don’t think they played any direct part in allowing the cataclysm to happen, and I don’t think they are staging a full scale invasion.
More likely, with all the tension in the world, the Russians have decided to gather first hand information on what is going on in Sweden. They have assumed that Östertörn is empty of humans, and that they likely could get in and observe and collect technology unnoticed. In the worst case (being spotted), they might have planned to shoot any potential witnesses of their presence there.
As it turned out they came underprepared, and overwhelmed by the machines they bit the dust just like the Swedish army. In addition, they were spotted by the resistance who naturally had every reason to think the russians were launching an invasion under cover of the cataclysm. They fought back, and the russian troops were all killed. Speculations aside, it gradually becomes harder to make sense of…
Were they really thinking they would get in and out unnoticed, no doubt whatsoever?
Have they completely disregarded any consequences their actions might have?
No matter what their intentions were, it was a really bad plan…
The Soviet Union, or Russia, has now in fact and by definition invaded Sweden! Although small scale, this is no small thing! What if neutral Sweden made a treaty with NATO to get help dealing with FNIX, and a huge joint operation was launched into Östertörn? Realistically, they would eventually defeat the machines, and encounter the russian troops, dead or alive. What then?
I don’t know the answer. While the russians are a cool addition to the game, it is a very slippery slope lore-wise, and I’m curious to see if any future content will justify and make sense of the russian presence. This is way too heavy to simply use as trivial set pieces. 
So they did gather information with their spies within the ranks, which is where I can agree with everyone that Sweden might not be liking Soviet spies and there is that setting of Tension. The thing is that Why they’re appearing is justified with one of the conflicting actions that the Soviets did in the main story… They communicated and gave the device. Sure, it was betrayal as it was explosive, but from Day 1 of trying to establish communications, they’ve not stopped keeping channels occupied to finally get in contact. They were distant observers with fleets, so you could guess that the ships aren’t equipped with tents, fortifications and generally ground equipment for military inhabiting.
Why it’s still conflicting to this day for me is - The Soviets mentioned they’re assisting With NATO, so it’s already intelligence gathering from multiple parties… Which means the Soviets would shoot themselves in the foot if they wanted to invade now. They HAVE to be there for assistance, but you can’t just justify again, because I did mention it’s a bit conflicting… The spies, the intelligence they gathered from Swedish military, the bomb and also that one incident with a Swedish Officer leaving his journal of hopes to start a resistance with another operative that seemingly shot and left the officer dead. That murder was close, single shot in the back of the head, so by someone trusted… Likely the person that shot him did not care for Swedish resistance, because they weren’t really doing this for the interest of Sweden. So… possibly a Soviet spy that murdered an officer and retreated to some extraction point.
Right now it could be that Soviet operatives are involved >possibly< in this operation ‘Yellow reindeer’ and acting as assistance. They could be covering up their tracks of espionage in that area and now externally offering assistance in operations.
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I support the theory about Soviets invading amidst chaos, since historically this was their MO - stir up trouble, then make themselves present and hard to bail out when no one looks/ too busy to deal with.
So my Train-Thought
Car 1:
SU High Command (SUHC) demanded this vanguard troops to establish on Ostertorn (why in the middle of main island - been airlifted and farmlands were clear enough?). Wings on insignia hits to air-related forces, gear is usually associated with engineer corp (similar to RL “Old Ironsides” of US Army). So we saw combat engineers company of Airborne-Assault Brigade (“Инженерная рота, Десантно-штурмовой батальйон”). Local resistance, as pointed out, had all the reasons to think about Cataclysm as Soviet Invasion. But when witnessed that Soviets and Machines were actively fighting, some Resistance joined remaining Soviet soldiers to fight the Metal Menace.
Car 2: This one needs elaboration on the time line, specifically if Soviets established before or after “FNIX Rising” events.
2.1 - after FR
With FNIX’s control over communications over Ostertorn and it’s (comm’s) brownout it so there’s total silence, SUHC and long-range reconnaissance concluded that FNIX no longer serious threat (after cannon been dealt with). SUHC tasked it’s invasion/relief forces to occupy certain regions and gain access to whatever sensitive information they could reach. First wave could touch ground successfully, without being retaliated immediately, but commotions been observed for sure. FNIX, being military AI, gathered big enough task force to efficiently sweep established camp at certain northern Farmlands farm. Like, gassing them out and/or calling in some nasty FNIX/Apoc units.
2.2: before FR.
SUHC tasked to occupy land and gain control over military facilities over Ostertorn, sent forces amidst the chaos to establish and prepare the bridgehead for main invasion forces. They interfered with local Sweddish Army. Latter had to fight at two fronts and failed. Due to comm brown out from FNIX this fact been undiscovered and Soviets didn’t get any political consequences (about attacking SwA). But FNIX, being Sweddish military AI, considered Soviets as invaders and actively opposed them. With lack of proper intelligence, vanguard company didn’t stand a chance in the long run. FNIX since then made sure that no one and nothing will fly over Ostertorn. Well, it had means (yet to be seen) to shoot down Elsa above Himfjall. I blame upscaled precision railgun (as seen on certain tanks). In the end, FNIX constructed the cannon, but SU forces perished before they could “taste” it.
Car 3:
Soviet forces are sanctioned to establish on the Ostertorn. But with comm failure, local resistance didn’t know about that and considered them as invasion forces. SUHC demanded occupation, but lacking intelligence proved this task impossible. Deployed commanders decided “screw mission” and joined any willing resistance forces (army remnants included) to just survive now, face insubordination later. That would explain why SU soldiers has sweddish stuff in possession.
Car 4: Since it’s declared that this is joint SU/NATO operation, US/NATO military forces are being deployed at the other region; SUHC was way too eager to jump on the gun and get there first (remember Berlin assault '45? Everyone sane said “siege is the way and germans will surrender for sure”, but Stalin wanted to get Berlin due to the certain date and sacrificed a lot of cannon fodder for that to happen), so SU vanguard was underprepared due to similar reasoning;
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You both bring up very good points.
Though I know that the Soviets aided in the final mission of vanilla GZ, I’ll admit that I hadn’t considered the possibilty of a joint Sweden/NATO/Soviet military operation. I’m not very good at deep diving into the lore of any game, while others eagerly read every book in Skyrim… 
I just think that in a cold war scenario, some extremely clear and careful boundaries would have to be set in advance, before allowing a second and a third party to enter a neutral country with military force. If one party (SU) took liberties beyond what was agreed upon, I can imagine things escalating in a way it wasn’t supposed to. And with any survivor left on Östertörn being unaware of these operations, misunderstandings could easily occur. Glasnost would be key here… It probably could have worked out, though. The ideological “war” between the west and the SU was coming to an end at this time. I also highly doubt that Stalin’s tragic cannon fodder tactics were still alive in '89, and especially not in an operation like this. It will be exciting to find out what the SU vanguard was up to, though.
Is it okay to headcanon that my character had a hostile encounter with the Russians wherein she killed a squad of them?
I'll reply this once and stop spreading any non-game lore politics
They still do “cannon fodder” tactics, as of late 201x.
Though, we still don’t know exact “lore politics” of GZ. For example FallOut verse had SU up until Nuclear-pocalypse in 2077.
Well i think that some of the soviet commanders maybe saw recistance fighters as bandits or scavengers and gave orders to open fire on them while on other places they could talk instead of fighting each other. And as i already said i think they are here to like loot östertörn of weapons and robots so they could build there own. And we swedes did not like the russians in the 80s and that is maybe the reason why they did fire opon the recistance, all of the survivors hasnt been to the locations the player have, so that means that they maybe dont know that the machines was built in sweden, they maybe see the machines and the russians like there are on the same side. Sorry for bad english is swedish
I love what you did there. I think any one of those scenarios could be a great DLC playthrough.
Given everything at the time I would say Russia banded up with NATO and helped as they had ready attack fleets, and as you stated FNIX saw it as a Russian invasion and death with things accordingly. I would say if that were the case the resistance had some interaction and that interaction would be the entire plot line to explain the back story to all the troops.
It does. Me and others had discussed that about it in the new locations thread. Obviously this one is less of just an exo suit, and more armor. But still similar. Also looks similar to the IRL Russian Ratnik suit.
As I read this tread I let my train of thoughts loose and came up with the idea of a triangle drama between the resistance, soviet and NATO.
Sweden, even though its a small neutral country, has been advanced in technology and weapon making.
While the world watches the machine invation in Sweden, NATO and Soviet offers to aid and sees their chance to go in and collect this new technology that can cause so much destruction. Hoping their scientists can tame it.
Sweden is allies with NATO but not a member so it wouldn’t be that hard for NATO to backstab Sweden, especially if they can go in, grab the Intel they need, pull back and nuke the place saying it was too out of control. If they get the technology, they could deal with soveit later.
Soviet has the same interest. They are not there to “save” Sweden.
Small neutral country? we had the worlds 4th largest airforce in the 80s we could mobilize almost 600 000 military personel, and we had a very big plan called totalförsvar (totaldefence) that had plans how we could defend ourselvs with both military and civilian forces. and sweden has always been a rich european country, we spend som much money in the cold war so that we built machines in the world of generation zero is not suprising, it is suprising that they made them work but not wired that they started such project. and i dont think that the us whould just go in to a bit of swedish land and just take what they want, we are a pretty strong country so we whould stop them, same for the soviets.
I meant small in comparison to Soviet and the US.
I’m not arguing with you, Sweden could very much defend themselves.
But in the game world I can totally imagine a cloak and dagger plot both from Soviet and NATO. Posing as allies but are present for a hidden agenda.
and sorry i didnt mean to be rude but many non swedes always gets the wrong impression of our country and our history