General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Ukraine is About Oil. So Was World War I [View all]Javaman
(62,534 posts)when the author wrote, "Russia couldnt stand idle as its sole Balkan ally, Serbia, was humiliated. So it mobilized on Austria-Hungary, an effective declaration of war."
while Russia might not have liked that Serbia was "humiliated", they didn't declare war because of that.
Triple Entente of 1907 is why they declared war. They were allies with both Britain and France. The Triple Entente was a counter weight to the Triple Alliance, which included: Germany, Austria-Hungry and Italy.
The German Offensive attack plan, created by German General Von Shlieffen, had Germany attacking France then once that was successful, they were then to attack Russia. This was on the pretense that Russia, notorious for having a long call up and arming time for their military (at least back then), would take the Russian's roughly 45 days to have their military ready for deployment.
However, due to various problems with their plan, the Germans attack upon France was not going as swiftly as they had hoped. (This was mostly due to a surprising counter offensive by the French)
Germany then had another surprise. The 45 day window on which they counted on before the Russians were ready, was cut short when the Russians began fielding troops after only 30 days.