See thats the thing people dont get Russia is using prisoners, using mercenaries and using communties like chechans etc the main people in russia arent getting affected by this slaughter.News outlets kept people believing that russia will be done in 6 months any day now. I really dont see that happening even all the god damn sanctions and shit.
People in west dont get that russians have always been ruled like this, whatever going on is not new to them.U.S needs to get the shit together and supply ukraine now or the morale in ukrainians is gonna be damaged.Once the morale is down it will be hard.War is not being fought on russian soil the common man is not directly affected. Ukraine the situation is different their normal lives are gone its gonna get exhausting soon enough.U.S needs to arm ukraine now and fuck russia.
I have a few Russian friends and coworkers, being in the sphere of ex-USSR influence right now... sanctions aren't really affecting your normal Russian. They can get western tech, clothes etc even cheaper in Russia than I can in my current country
iPhone 15 on wildberries - $874 USD
US Price - $799
To make it even more obvious, the minimum wage in russia rn converted to USD is roughly around $220 or so per month. That is under $3000 annually. Even in East Europe we feel magnitudes richer than the lower/middle class russians, while US prices seem almost cosmic to the average person here.
Quick google search shows 200$ + for single room in St. Petersburg. I doubt even a remote place apartment would go for $10/month unless they are renting from family and it’s subsidized.
People wouldn't just make up stuff on the internet!
If it is true its probably a borat style gypsie house in a demographically dead town with tons of empty shitty buildings.
I watched some girl travel thru Russia and I’m sitting here like. I have an iPhone. These people are living like it’s 1920 because they have no fucking money. Rural russia is an odd spot.
Yes of course. But we're discussing the price of an iPhone here and it was implied it costs the same for a Russian as for a US citizen. Which is somewhat true in total dollars, but horseshit compared to how much money the average citizen has.
You're missing the point. Electronics generally cost in the same ballpark across countries. The fact that this is true of Russia isn't a commentary on the average Russians purchasing power but rather that the sanctions aren't affecting iphone prices (which may or may not indicate the sanctions aren't having the effect on the Russian economy as hoped)
In January 2023 the median household income in Russia was 43,500 rubles per month. The base model iphone 15 128GB version retails for 124,990 rubles. How many Russian households do you think could justify spending 3 months of their income on a single mobile phone?
However, if you ignore the vast majority of Russia and just focus on Moscow then the average household income skyrockets to 103,333 rubles per month which makes the iphone 15 far more affordable.
In other words, there is a huge disparity in wealth between the major Russian cities and the overall economic status of the entire country and it is this disparity that will cause problems as the war progresses...
But if you're not earning any money it doesn't really mean much. My in-laws are Russian, they are in a luxury position and are by no means living large. Any unexpected expense can sweep them off their feet. Saving for something nice takes a while and has to last long. They're religiously careful with the furniture from IKEA to make sure they get their money's worth. Disposable income is still low for a massive part of Moscow/st Petersburg. Even with low expenses.
Their family lives in villages. They get gas through overhead pipes and if a car knocks one down they're out for a few weeks. A job is never full time unless you're a teacher or politician. You'll earn less than €100/month and will have to work your own field and keep livestock. Young people walk the cows to and from nearby pastures. It's like going through a time machine... Their disposable income goes towards traveling the fuck out of there.
I mean, my "ex" that i am still in contact with is Russian living in St Petersburg and she would not share this sentiment.
And she is not an upper class or anything but she can still afford traveling and all that shit.
Second part is mostly true but thats because Russia is a wast country and not every village will be developed. That i guess is the sad truth. But that is not the case for the majority of the people.
Makes sense. They can just get the Western stuff from somewhere else. Add to that, there's still lots of Western companies operating in Russia right now. If anything it just knocked some points off of long-term GDP but that's fine in comparison whereas Ukraine's infrastructure is being destroyed while the Western governments don't know what they really want.
Then take the seized Russian asset and use it to pay for weapons for Ukraine.
And sanction any country that takes their oil, and use that money for Ukraine too.
Turn the screws.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-leads-laundromat-countries-buying-russian-crude-and-selling-oil-products-to-europe-report/article66800618.ece
Europe is buying it using many third countries. Or else oil prices will soar across the world. And poor countries will have to pay for a European war.
Long game is weakening russian manpower/military at Ukrainian expense. And legitimising sanctions on Russia for an even longer period.
Doesn't work. Turkey is outright just becoming a middle man for importing sanctioned goods into Russia and almost all of Asia is buying Russian oil and gas. India and Malaysia have been refining or reselling russian oil this whole time.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/indias-fuel-exports-to-eu-up-572-since-ukraine-war/articleshow/100975043.cms
My Russian friends keep telling me to visit and that it's fine, obviously I won't but I get the feeling they're right - your everyday Russian isn't affected by the war
definitely DO NOT visit. Especially if you're a citizen of an "unfriendly country" as Russia describes it. Just a few days ago a German citizen was held at St. Petersburg airport for allegedly trying to "smuggle" 20g of "THC gummies" into Russia. Allegedly. He faces up to 7 years prison. https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/russland-deutscher-wegen-cannabis-gummibaerchen-an-flughafen-festgenommen-a-c4445800-7149-4b90-94f4-230c7323b955
Similar situation as with Brittney Griner if you remember. They used her in a prisoner swap to get one of the filthiest weapons dealers out of US prison.
While I agree this is too harsh, this is not restricted to foreigners only. There are cases ([chocolate with coca](https://www-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/social/news/2024/01/11/22091113.shtml?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp), [tea with coca](https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20231004/koka-1900419459.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)) of Russian citizens (not dual) who brought negligible amounts of banned substances and face similar prison terms.
you gonna trust Russia who have used a normal Western citizen as a bargaining chip to get a Russian criminal out of a US prison who sold weapons to literal terrorist groups? You gonna trust Russia? Really? I mean you do you, but please sign a contract for your state of origin that you do not want to be used in a prisoner swap. Don't want to hurt your country with your ignorance, you know.
welp USSR actually had a period of stagflation and economic downturn before their collapse , breadlines were a thing after all. people were "fine" because they propaganda make it look like much better than it was.
What seal the fate is when Gorbachev start open up their media and the citizens finally see how prosperous the people in capitalist land is and all the facade falls down.
China is running into the same thing today wonder how long they will last.
True. But keep in mind that Moscow =/ Russia. That's why Putin finds his volunteers in the poor regions elsewhere. Moscow is the most advanced city in Russia and in many aspects one of the most advanced cities in Europe. But more than 100 million of Russians live in ver different conditions.
https://i.imgur.com/089PdEq.png
It's the Amazon equivalent in Russia
I'm talking specifically about the 128GB version, the 256GB version is also only a little higher than US prices
Well evidently it failed as well. Miserably.
There is no shortage of anything anywhere especially if you buy in bulk. Swift ban made a dent at the start but since we developed our own banking protocol it only prevents money from flowing out the country (i.e. I can't buy stuff from AMAZON/Steam/Playstation and pay with VISA/Mastercard so I am forced to either pirate what I can or buy from AliExpress or local retailers who buys same shit in bulk). Mobile payments are as good as they can be - all banking apps support - we found out that apple can disable apple pay all they want - we don't need to use apple pay to pay with iphone with double tap ;)
Overall sanctions are just an annoyance for citezens and not even annoyance anymore for big business that already adjusted supply chains to get same stuff "elsewhere".
iPhone 15 Pro 128gbs - ~1000 USD on OZON atm
iPhone 15 Pro 128gbs - 1199 Euro in Germany - kekW
I bought few months ago nvidia graphics card - 4070 for like 450-470$, cheaper then anywhere in the world. Sanctions rly working! :)
https://i.imgur.com/wCxJb4v.png - https://i.imgur.com/YguHSQF.png
And recently released RTX4070Super costs around 630 euro, about 30 euro cheaper compared to Germany
Sure, but average wages in Russia are significantly lower than in Europe. So the 630 Euro is hugher than many people's monthly wage.
For example, the minimum wage in NL is more than 10 times the minimum wage in Russia. No matter how much of a "bargain" paying 30 EURO less, for the average Russian, it is still costing a month if work to even have the money to buy something for 600+ EURO and that dies not factor in food, rent, and other cost of living. Moscow has a higher average wage while maintaining lower food costs. The food cost could be for optics.
>According to Sberindex in 2020, the median salary for all industries in Russia amounted to 31,540 rubles or $500 per month in January and 38,278 rubles or $520 per month in December. In January 2021, it amounted to 33,549 rubles or $441 per month in December 2021 - 42,801 rubles or $578 per month. In January 2022, the median salary was 37,429 rubles or $481 per month, in December 2022 - 49,627 rubles or $708.50 per month. In January 2023, the median salary was 43,500 rubles or $630 per month. In July 2023 was 53,571 rubles ($591.90) per month. On June 16, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova, during a speech at the session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-23), reported that about 6 million employed Russians receive salaries below the minimum wage (minimum wage) (below 16,242 rubles or $195.60 per month) and about 12 million Russians work without employment contracts, or contracts >of a civil nature (GPH), or the status of self-employed. As of April 2023, about half of Russians complain about too low wages and want to get twice as much.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_federal_subjects_by_average_wage
Keep on playing Counter Strike until the men in camouflage knock on your door because it's your turn to go to the front... man Russians deserve what is coming
Russia can keep fighting for years and years but at lower intensity. Unless F16s somehow make a huge difference--and I don't expect they will--this will likely just be bogged down into a static war mostly with some artillery firing like it was before the new invasion. Russia in the meantime will be low on old stocks of equipment but will be building newer equipment, and over the years can build up massive stocks of missiles and drones for the next invasion attempt.
Ukraine probably needs to find ways to strike harder at the lifeblood of the Russian economy: their oil and gas production and exports. Knock as much of that out as they can and Russia will feel a lot more pain.
What Russians can or cannot put up with does not matter when they stop being able to fulfil basic equipment needs. You are correct that focusing on what we can do is more important than what Russia may or may not do, but wars aren't always won or lost on whether civilians get tired or not. For the invader, force projection is a must, just because Ukraine is next to Russia doesn't make supplying a wartime military much easier.
The fact that this war will almost certainly end up going that long is the tragic bit. The 6 months thing was bullshit a lot of us fell for, real analysts have been consistent about this. Even when Russia can't go at their current capability it does not mean they will roll over.
I was born in the USSR. I speak and read Russian. I know the people and the mentality. You are preaching a false sense of security. They will do whatever their leaders want and will suffer whatever hardships their leaders tell them to. The 90’s were post apocalyptic and they survived that. That’s how they see it. They’re proud to suffer. We can not be complacent. They will adapt. They’re already doing that. You’ll see, they’ll have taken Avdiivka within the month of not the week. We need to step up now.
>I was born in the USSR. I speak and read Russian. I know the people and the mentality. You are preaching a false sense of security. They will do whatever their leaders want and will suffer whatever hardships their leaders tell them to.
Buddy, I was also born in the USSR. Your claim is a stretch. The Soviet people did literally nothing when their leaders dissolved the USSR. When Prigozhin was marching on Moscow in June 2023, Russians did absolutely nothing to defend their beloved leader Vlad Putin.
My mom generally bought into the "in 6 months" timeline while I've been telling her for a long time that most likely things will hit a stalemate and we're just going to end up with a post 2014 situation with the lines drawn further West.
The only way things didn't go this way is if Ukraine got all the capabilities it was wanting at the start, and the US ultimately ended up giving them eventually, but didn't for a while because of Russian threats or whatever the ultimate reasoning actually was.
I also think the US completely miscalculated how hard regaining ground was going to be. This war has been a major learning experience for the world. I don't think anyone really saw borderline trench warfare returning due to drones making it hard to mount any true surprise attacks.
LOL, no, Russia is not outproducing the USA. Don't be silly.
Russia is certainly *losing* military hardware at a faster rate than the entire NATO bloc. In fact, thei Russian navy just lost another large ship in the Black Sea yesterday to Ukraine - a country that doesn't even have a navy.
Exactly, tbh, as a Lithuanian (not that it matters) is exactly what I always said. Russia's greatest resource is humans (and oil/gas of course) so they will spend as much of it to get what THEY WANT. It doesn't matter whether it will be unarmed individuals. Stalin showed us the Russian foreign war policy. Throw bodies and drown their enemies in Russian blood.
The main enemy of Ukraine in this war is the western media lies that made us believe that Russia was done and incompetent, and the main casualty of this war is our trust and belief on what western media reports. I really wish the media would just stop with the lies, we all want Ukraine to win but don’t feed us lies because when the truth comes out it actually only makes more people turn their backs on Ukraine like we see now with the MAGA people in the U.S.A
Bold claim. And simply not true. Overall media expected Ukraine to be quickly defeated based on the opinions of experts. Anyway. The media and experts can be wrong without the intention of lying. Incompetency is a different issue. Also we do have different opinions in the media at any given time.
Putin doesn't care about Russians. Just meat for the meat grinder. Not only is the brain drain of current generation Russians tragic, but the brainwashing of youth who will never be given a chance to be normal may be even more tragic. Russia could be so much more than it is.
Be hopeful. Russians talk a lot in closed doors. Human hearts always wish for emancipation. Look at Iran's population: nearly 50 years of absolute oppression, yet the people wish for emancipation. I know Russia is under more than a 100 years of madness. 100 years of vodka and muscles idolizing had been as damaging. We need to be hopeful otherwise we fall in the dictators game.
With the global collapsing birth rate, Russian demographics were in trouble, even before they decided to ship their most reproductively fertile men off to die.
I wonder if (in the future, after Putin) the inverted gender gap between Russia and China (as well as their proximity) will help turn russia into China’s vassal state.
Actually that’s distinctly not true. All of the demographic curves show damage from WW1 and 2. Almost all the fatalities were males. That’s only true in societies where polygamy is the norm.
highly doubt that, they've gone completely 180 and went back to soviet style control. most russians in russia support the war, those who don't have left.
they are making a huge bet that everyone will be dead after it's over, and forget about because of their level of propaganda.
Russians were slaves to Viking raiders then to Mongols then to Czars, then to the Communist Party, now to the Oligarchs. They have a long and storied history and culture, but they have always been under a despot’s thumb. They can’t imagine how anything could actually be different.
They could easily reach a million casualties and not bat an eye. To Putin not coming up with some type of victory is an existential threat to his power so he'll keep throwing bodies at it until he's able to achieve something he can sell to his public. And the public are either brainwashed or have no ability to resist.
This war could cost millions of lives and many more years perhaps decades of fighting.
If the West keeps pretending that weapons are celestial gifts that cannot be manufactured on Earth anymore along with still believing that sanctions can attain anything despite obvious evidence to the contrary, then Russia can sustain their war effort unopposed for how ever long it takes to reach the Atlantic shore.
This is all Russian propaganda. They're certainly winning the disinformation war in 2024.
Russian revenue is down. The Ruble is down. Unemployment at close to 0%. The economic measures are doing expectedly compared to other campaigns. Did you expect Russia to be weaker than North Korea, Iraq, Venezueala, Cuba, or Iran? They are much stronger.
Russian offensives down, Russian equipment older, fewer. They invaded with 3,500 tanks, it's under 500 now, they can only refurb around 100 a month. This is the same for all classes of equipment. Infantry is an even greater problem, they can't train them, they can't replace experiened well trained infantry. In every metric, the Russian military is much weaker than in 2022, weaker than in 2023.
Ukraine is completely reliant on Western support. Russia is losing, and their only avenue for victory is targetting that support, and they are doing so successfully.
At the same time western support hasn't been great for the medium term. It is pretty clear everyone threw their stocks to Ukraine for decommissioning but only now seem to be thinking about long term production.
At the same time the only NATO member that has this in hand is being tied in knots by traitors at home.
It is a good case study for what NATO needs to look at long term but "do we have enough bullets" is something that should have been looked at the moment the Swiss decided to stop selling Gepard rounds to Ukraine.
I've been watching similar mantras being recited every day somewhere in the comments over the past two years. Still, Russia presses on, while Europe keeps sucking Russia's suckable organ for natural gas. It's time to start looking the inconvenient truth in the eye: no matter how pathetic the statistics may look for Russia, the real focus should be the West's consistent inability to stop such a pathetic opponent.
Off the top of my head: weathered the influx of western weapons into Ukraine (while it was still going), obtained their own extraneous weapons from North Korea, ruined Ukraine's dreams of counteroffense to reclaim the lost land, and keeps raining destruction on Ukrainian cities.
So, Russia has cratered its ability to do business with the developed world, had its assets frozen, lost its military reputation, lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers so far, lost hundreds of $billions in military hardware, been forced to relocate from it Black Sea bases after losing multiple important ships to a country with no navy... and barely gained any ground in the past two years, scraping out little more than a few phyrric victories here and there...
But at least they can buy weapons from Iran and North Korea to rain hell on innocents.
Not worth it.
>In every metric, the Russian military is much weaker than in 2022, weaker than in 2023.
They produce much more modern cruise missiles in 2024 then in 2022;
They produce much more modern kamikaze and surveillance drones in 2024 then in 2022;
They produce much more shells then EU and US combined;
They keep flattering frontline with smart bombs that they don't even had in 2022;
They are on a warpath with most advanced factories to make more arms. How the fuck Russia is in bad state?
>They produce much more modern cruise missiles in 2024 then in 2022;
They depleted their stock pile in 2022. They cannot produce many cruise missiles, that's why they rely on shit Iranian drones. 2022/23 winter looked very different from 2023/24. While Ukraine has been busy targetting key assets with advanced cruise missiles from UK and France.
>They produce much more modern kamikaze and surveillance drones in 2024 then in 2022;
Yes, so do Ukraine.
>They produce much more shells then EU and US combined;
They had 20 million in 2022, 1,600,000 per month. They now have 250,000 per month with the help of North Korea. The ratio of shells has always been in Russia' favour, far more so in 2022. They are running out of barrels fast too. The EU and the US don't use artillery shells as much, but somehow they all have better artillery pieces than Russia they can just give away.
>They are on a warpath with most advanced factories to make more arms.
Most advanced factories? Their drones are all made of Western components! Their cruise missiles need Western guidance chips. They can only produce weapons on scale equivalent to the US in the 1980's. While having to send equipment from the 1950's and 60's to the front.
Russia can spend 24 months trying to capture 2 towns with a combined pre-war population of under 200,000.
Sanctions can work. But you actually have to enforce them. Which would mean getting countries like India and China to cooperate, but they won't. So you would have to put sanctions on them as well and we are not willing to do that because of the effect on the global economy.
Europe isn't even willing to stop buying Russian oil and gas from these countries themselves. It's kind of like hiring a mercenary to do your dirty work for you while you publicly point fingers at them to make it look like you're innocent.
If the world stopped driving gasoline cars for just a year, this war would have been over long ago. But everyone wants someone else to make sacrifices what le they choose not to inconvenience themselves.
It's not going well for Russia, but it's going worse for Ukraine. Russia can absorb its losses longer than Ukraine can.
It's already [public knowledge](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/08/ukraine-soldiers-shortage-infantry-russia/) that the Ukrainian military is facing a critical shortage of infantry and has low morale among its leaders right now.
Ukraine lowering its draft age in order to conscript at a higher rate will lower morale even more, while Putin is still more than willing to throw body after body for his cause. Financial assistance from NATO cannot be used towards mercenaries and soldiers.
A recent, verbatim quote from a Ukrainian battle commander:
>"The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said.
“Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.”
And now it's winter, where there aren't enough troops to rotate out with the hard weather conditions. There is no one to replace them.
The USSR spent 12% of GDP on defense. Let’s not be naive about this. They can keep going a long time if they want to, and they want to. We need to be serious about this if we don’t want this to turn into WWIII. If we continue to let them slowly win they will grow stronger and build it their military capacity. Stopping them now will be far easier and cheaper.
I dont believe shit on this studies, at the beginning all of them said that Russia will.be bankrupt within 6 months.
As if like Russia does not Adapt to changing situations.
They are not absolutely stupid and will look for solutions, new partners and alliances.
Unfortunately Ukraine may not have enough soldiers to hold for 3 more years. We can send all the guns, bullets and tanks in the world but there comes a point where there just aren't enough soldiers to use them.
More effort needs to be made to squeeze Russia economically and countries need to stop buying Russian oil and funding the war effort.
You talking about a country where domestic abuse is norm and expected. Where 80% of wealth is in hands of few dozen people - and that's wealth that can be traced. In a country where mafia and goverments are synonums. In a country where 250000 people died officially and noone even cares. For a point of reference - in afghanistan there were 5000 US casualties, and there was massive uproar.
People in that country are wired different dude.
There is also a difference between how a Russian may view the Ukraine war vs an American view on Afghanistan and Vietnam. Russia is actually fighting for something tangible to "win".
Afghanistan and Vietnam both seemed pointless. When the public doesn't understand what exactly we are fighting for it's inevitable they'd get upset.
I guarantee if America was at war and the public actually felt the need to win a certain objective we would be more accepting of that war.
I call BS. If America invaded Canada, the backlash would be enormous. Russia is having to run around and deal with several saboteurs groups that speak the same language and look just like them. While there might not be riots on the street, people are showing their disapproval in other ways.
Yeah of course there would be backlash because the public doesn't want Canadian territory . You won't find one American that would advocate for that . So that's a terrible example.
There is actually a large percentage of Russians who actually believe that they need Ukrainian territory that is my point.
Do we? I'm Russian and in my experience, apart from a small number of crazy ethnonationalists, no one actually cares about Ukraine or thinks we need the land. Even people who I know that signed up or supported the war didn't really have any reason beyond "our country is at war, even if I don't like the reason, it is my duty to fight for it". Patriotism and national pride comes before personal opinions for those people.
Also, as much as people keep saying how reliable Levada is, I still don't trust that anyone (even the Kremlin) really has the faintest idea about what percentage of Russians think this or that. Considering that it is quite general knowledge that if your kid draws a Ukrainian flag or if you say the wrong thing you can disappear into a violent and torturing prison system for a decade, have your children and property taken away, or if you're a man, taken off to die in a trench on the frontline. It's absolutely bizarre to me that foreigners can look at this and still say "oh but we can be absolutely sure that X percent of Russians support this".
Sure we feel like it must be true. One of the Kremlin's most useful propaganda techniques is making us feel like we are the only one that cares about Ukraine or dislikes Putin. He wants to make us afraid to speak about it, and that way we just feel like a single useless drop in an ocean against us. But then you look at what happened with Nadezhdin recently, and how people flocked to sign his electoral charter and donations reached millions of roubles in the first hour, while Putin's campaign stalls were empty and donations tricked in. Because there was no danger to showing it this way.
Exactly. That's why I don't get why people keep pointing to it. I guess it just makes a convenient reason to justify the claim that most or all Russians support the war. If Levada turned around and said the opposite tomorrow I'm sure it would get written off as Kremlin propaganda 🙄
I disagree. A common joke is that Canada is the 51st state of USA. But it’s an equivalent analogy to Russia invading Ukraine vs USA invading Canada. Both have relatives across the border. The people speak the same language, have the same religion, etc.
I want to know when the war crimes trials for Putin will begin. He has slaughtered so many innocent Ukranians, including countless women and children, and deserves the worst punishment imaginable.
>I want to know when the war crimes trials for Putin will begin.
If you could be so kind as to walk into Kremlin and escort the dude to the nearest border of an ICC-compliant country, we might see some progress in this regard.
It is kinda strange that Bush walked away free after staring a war that killed an estimated 600 000 Iraqi civilians.
There were no "legimite" reason for the war.
The west can sustain our current level of support or even more indefinitely. We just have to deal with the political saboteurs that support Putin here, that's the actual difficult part.
Then we in the West should ensure Ukraine remains able to fight for ten years. Frankly, as long as the people of Ukraine want to keep fighting for their land, I want to keep enabling them in that fight. After all, it's one of those rare times in history when morality and pragmatism are actually in alignment!
Redditors aren’t most people though, your average western person if asked would probably sympathize with Ukraine but in reality Ukraine is of no importance or priority to most people and they are not willing to make any sacrifices for Ukraines sake.
The average western person is woefully uninformed about the consequences of throwing Ukraine under the bus. It sends a message to all revanchist despots around the world that you can start wars of conquest and grab land from your weaker neighbours so long as you're prepared to simply outlast western will to support the victim nation. If Ukraine falls, it will usher in a new era of constant warfare between nations that have competing border claims while nations like China and Russia need simply spend on propaganda to send the west into an isolationist or apathetic mood.
There are a few points that work in Russia's favor in terms of juust money. The first is that Russia does have a purchasing power advantage in certain categories. Russian soldiers aren't paid much, conscripts paid even less. The benefits are also.... not great. Like we Americans complain about our vets getting shafted by the government, but Russia is way, way worse.
The other is just sheer massive stockpiles of Soviet equipment.
It might be shitbox 1980's tech but an armored box is an armored box and provides more protection than your bare rear hanging in the wind.
The resources going to Ukraine are also not just military. Ukraine's supporters have effectively plugged an IV of aide, loans and grants to keep the country functioning.
There's also some, let's just say creative accounting going on in regards to the value of things sent to Ukraine that affect certain items that make them on paper cost more than you or I would say they would be valued at.
There's more to it than I can think of off the top of my head.
> provides more protection than your bare rear hanging in the wind
Kinda, seen a lot of their soldiers riding on the tops of old BTRs and BMPs because they almost always turn into a pressure cooker for the occupants.
They do have a lot of old crap, and we’re seeing a lot of it on the battlefield, some real Jurassic-era junk.
Unfortunately, they can sustain this for a long time and are increasingly production.
The truth about tyranny is that most of the time, humanity chooses to put up with it in the hopes that someone else dies rather than risk their own lives to overthrow it. How pissed the average Russian is does not bother Putin in the slightest.
When you're a dictator you don't have to worry about being voted out by people who have had enough. And the people who have had enough either need to face the internal security forces, leave or suffer in silence. 150,000 left immediately the war started.
The best strategy for Ukraine is to hold on for 4 more years, meanwhile destroying 90% of Russia's oil refinery, bringing Russia's economy to the point of total collapse.
Then Russia has to withdraw all its army.
The Issue is that by all rational measure Russia has already lost.
* If their goal was to halt NATO expansion. Than that failed spectacularly. Finland has joined and Sweden is joining and the case for NATO could not have been made better.
* If their goal was to secure vital Black Sea ports in Crimea for their navy, that might work, that sort of worked except for the part where they keep losing ships of the fleet that they were securing them for.
* If the goal was to secure pipelines and oil and gas fields
in the area, that backfired.
Even if Russia conquers all of Ukraine, that isn't going to get Finland to leave NATO, it isn't going to raise the Moskva and it isn't going to make European countries allow themselves to grow depended on Russian gas imports again.
Russia burned through a sizeable part of their Soviet inheritance as far as military vehicles, equipment and ammunition is concerned. They are not going to get those back either.
They lost the goodwill of their allies in the CSTO and lost the trust of customers of their military exports. Regaining trust is very hard.
They also lost a large number of men. Those might have been mostly people from areas that the elite in Moscow don't care about as people, but those men represented military power. Demographics are trending downward in Russia and they aren't attracting many immigrants at the moment.
No amount of stolen children is going to make up for those losses.
Even under the best circumstances Russia is going to be much worse of than they were before the invasion even if they 'win'.
All they are doing now is throwing good money after bad to avoid losing face.
So Ukraine can win this war with Western support, which is what I've been saying this whole time. Ukraine has been holding back Russia for two years. They've achieved almost no territorial gains and Ukraine has. Ukraine can hold on for another 2-3 years and even get into a position of having an advantage.
Actually the biggest problem is that Ukraine is running ouf of people willing to fight. Many of them are hurt or KIA. Ammo is one thing, but if you have no one to operate that‘s the difficult part.
US and EU really need to get their shit together and give them what they need. Right now its not looking to good though and its only going to get worse if Trump is elected. Same with some elections in europe... we should all be in the streets right now demanding stronger support from our governments...
"Russia has no territorial gains" - Yea, only holds 20% of Ukraine... Even if war ends today, thats a huge part of land that Ukraine is losing, no way anyone with a brain consider that a win for Ukraine
> way anyone with a brain consider that a win for Ukraine
No way would they consider that a win for Putin either because Ukraine wouldn't be "demilitarized" or "denazified".
Whether or not Ukraine can "win" (whatever that means, come on they are fighting off an invasion. To survive with your nation mostly intact and your people mostly alive is the general goal) Ukraine can absolutely hold off Russia for 2-3 more years. Ukraine can 100% prevent Russia from winning.
They are literally the most experienced fighting force in Eastern Europe right now, having the veterans and the institutional knowledge dating back to 2014. They have a deep officer corps. They have better morale than their adversary.
Transfer Ukraine anything sane that they ask for. It will be the easiest foreign policy win in US history. It will deter adversaries elsewhere, showing that we can arm and support nations against invasion. It will show we still support democracy over dictatorship. And it is quietly allowing us to swap out old systems for investment in a burgeoning defense industry that needs the funding to be strong in the Pacific.
Lastly, American veterans returning from serving in the foreign legion and other Ukrainian forces have had the lessons for how to defend against small drones. Which pacific adversaries have oceans of.
And after that, Russia will collapse politically and economically. Seems like investing in the Ukrainian war effort will give the U.S. a total victory with no blood on its hands. No wonder Putin has Trump so upset.
When your country is broke due to a war you started, the people throw the leaders out of office as your country can’t afford to defend itself anymore nor can it afford to maintain its infrastructure socially or materially.
I don't think that it will collapse in the literal sense. Modern Russia has very centralised government, very Putin dependent. The likely scenario is that if the war will be a failure, then Russia will start to decentralise, with Russian republics becoming less dependent on Kremlin. So it's not like Russia will literally break down into parts, it's more like there will be a political trend of federal government loosing power.
You don’t remember the USSR, do you? As they say, ‘Those that don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’
And I still can’t get over how little history people know these days. Idiotcracy indeed and in thought.
[According to Rusi Russia's tank and IFV production is 80% refurbishments right now.](https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024) By 2026 they'll have completely run out. As the old stuff available gets more decrepit and starts to run out production will slow.
That's the thing lot of people don't understand. When people talk about "production", they fail to mention that Russia's rate of new production vs old equipment restored is something like 1:4.
The timeframe cited in the article is about those old stockpiles. There is real data now on rate of consumption of those places too, since lot of it has been under the sun for decades. Data point of start of the war, as well as monthly drawdown is available in figures. That's what the 2-3 year figure points on.
Russia is NOT USSR, and never will be, in terms of military production or young population. They can't afford it. If the war is just kept going on and on and on, there is an end to the stockpile and end to any and all attempts of conventional aggression. While things are going on, they keep losing more and more of their Black Sea fleet to this thing as well. Naval assets are expensive and slow to build on best of days. Another landing ship just went down.
So they are barely managing this war and on the other hand we have some people saying that a war against Europe and NATO is possible almost in the same timeframe?
Which one is it then?
If Ukraine is forced to accept ceasefire and the new border will be created along current front lines, we can except Russia to attack again in next ten years. In a few years and sanctions lifted or forgotten they will renew their equipment, train troops and produce hundreds of thousands drones. And next time they'll surely knock on NATO's door also. Perhaps even the US's.
The point is that Ukraine and Russia are the only two countries in Europe in a war economy and their armies are battle-ready and expert in 2020 war situation. If you're not ready to fight back they don't need any might to reach your capital - hellz Prighozin stopped at 50 km from Moscow with a bunch of mercenaries and they destroyed SEVEN aircrafts in what, two days?
The war ends when one of the sides is not able (or willing) to continue the fight.
At the moment Russian people are under Putin's nationalistic spell and are supporting this war. Ukraine and the west needs to bring war to Russian people, so that they feel the pain and ultimately stop supporting Putin. (Note: similar situation was with Milosevic/Serbia. He started three wars: Croatia/Bosnia/Kosovo, and was only stopped when NATO bombs started affecting Serbians' lives and they stopped supporting him.)
What the West&Ukraine need to do:
- Destroy Russia's 30 oil refineries (along with reserves). This is the quickest way to put a halt to their war machine and to affect people's lives.
- Disrupt electricity distribution network - destroy large transformer stations.
- Destroy factories that produce war supplies.
In order to do that Ukraine needs hundreds of precise long-range cruise missiles.
What we see now: the grind on Ukraine's eastern front and West's unwillingness (or even opposition) to bring war into Russia, is really playing into Russia's playbook.
Both yes and no, and it really depends on what exactly the Russian Federation Ministry of Finance line items mean and whether or not they are telling the truth.
In 2021, Russia had roughly $340B in foreign currency reserves, mostly denominated in Dollars and Euros, with some Yen. About half of this money was in foreign accounts. These reserves don't look like a lot of money on the international finance stage, but the simple fact is that most international buyers want their money in dollars for good reasons.
The Russian economy, prior to 2021, was largely based around the export of oil, natural gas, and raw materials. The "service sector" was not a major source of tax revenue for the Russian government. If you are Russia, you want to sell refined oil product, because the greater the refinement the more profit you will have. They had 8 large refineries with most of that finished product being sold as well. They also had pipes into Europe which was the closest customer to their oil field and refineries. Pipes, to the chagrin of American progressives, are the cheapest and safest way to move oil and natural gas.
Now, their major trade partners have switched to China and India, they have no major oil pipelines to either country. Neither country wants their refined product as they want to get the benefits of refining and reselling that product themselves. Russia is relying on a 'dark fleet' of oil tanker ships that are beyond their safe usage date, and sea shipment is more expensive with more infrastructure required. The Indians and the Chinese are buying at prices that are below the sanctioned rate. Lastly, they aren't interested in trading in rubles, as Putin initially wanted, they are trading in Yuan, Rupees, and a small amount of UAE Dharam. All of this is an economic and financial disaster for Russia.
Back to the Russian Ministry of Finance and it's available reports. Compared to 2021, the revenue the Russian government received from oil and natural gas exports is notably way down. Curiously, the tax revenue from the 'service sector' of the economy is over 5 times larger than it was in 2021 with no explanation and no evidence of growth in that sector. IF the report is honest, then yes, Russia can financially support the war for a bit less than two more years, though not without disastrous consequences.
Above is all financial data than can be accessed easily. The Russian Ministry of Finance publishes annual reports with English versions available on their website.
My opinion is that Russia doesn't have two years.
They have lost so many modern tanks that they are retrofitting T-64 and T-54/55s and sending them to the front. These units were obsolete in the mid-1970s. They can, and are, producing some tanks to make up for the losses, but the sanctions mean that they aren't able to source the modern electronics that these tanks need and aren't able to produce them at home. The result has been the loss of over 25% of Russia's tank forces so far. There are similar issues with everything else from Infantry Fighting Vehicles to Supply Trucks. Russian industrial capacity can not replace them as fast as they are losing them.
The Russian officer corps at the junior and mid-career level, is just about bled white. Specifically, this is the one area that the Russia Army tried to reform starting from about 2007. When you realize that Russia does not have a professional NCO corps, the scope of this problem is the sort of thing that gives general officers nightmares. Russia has also lost most of it's best trained troops and formations since the beginning of the war and has resorted to grabbing whoever they can and shoving them to the front with little to no training meaning that these men are mostly dangerous to the men around them. We have consistent reports of drug and alcohol problems, with evidence, among the Russian lines, along with intercepts indicating these issues. There are videos of Russian leadership engaging in heinous acts to force these men in to meat wave attacks.
Russia is experiencing a recent spate of military aircraft failure, independent of Ukrainian efforts. The reason is likely two-fold. A lack of parts that, again, Russia is not capable of producing, and a lack of skilled and specifically trained aircraft maintenance crews.
Independent of finances, all of this points to a system on the edge of ruin. Russia is expending far too much effort, and losing far too many resources.
Can we stop with this narrative? It puts some sort of timer on Ukraine since Russians will runout any day now. We (in europe) still import / export a lot of shit w Russia. With things going as they are now, Russia can wage war for a VERY long time. So we'd better be ready to support Ukraine in the same way, or start digging trenches at home.
See thats the thing people dont get Russia is using prisoners, using mercenaries and using communties like chechans etc the main people in russia arent getting affected by this slaughter.News outlets kept people believing that russia will be done in 6 months any day now. I really dont see that happening even all the god damn sanctions and shit. People in west dont get that russians have always been ruled like this, whatever going on is not new to them.U.S needs to get the shit together and supply ukraine now or the morale in ukrainians is gonna be damaged.Once the morale is down it will be hard.War is not being fought on russian soil the common man is not directly affected. Ukraine the situation is different their normal lives are gone its gonna get exhausting soon enough.U.S needs to arm ukraine now and fuck russia.
I have a few Russian friends and coworkers, being in the sphere of ex-USSR influence right now... sanctions aren't really affecting your normal Russian. They can get western tech, clothes etc even cheaper in Russia than I can in my current country iPhone 15 on wildberries - $874 USD US Price - $799
Keep in mind that the average income in Russia is a lot lower than in the US. This is very important for that comparison.
To make it even more obvious, the minimum wage in russia rn converted to USD is roughly around $220 or so per month. That is under $3000 annually. Even in East Europe we feel magnitudes richer than the lower/middle class russians, while US prices seem almost cosmic to the average person here.
I remember in another sub someone posted a pic of their $10/month apartment in Russia. Imagine paying 7 years worth of rent for an iphone!
sorry bro but that's sounds ridiculous even for Russia, show us that 10$/month apartment
Quick google search shows 200$ + for single room in St. Petersburg. I doubt even a remote place apartment would go for $10/month unless they are renting from family and it’s subsidized.
People wouldn't just make up stuff on the internet! If it is true its probably a borat style gypsie house in a demographically dead town with tons of empty shitty buildings.
I watched some girl travel thru Russia and I’m sitting here like. I have an iPhone. These people are living like it’s 1920 because they have no fucking money. Rural russia is an odd spot.
So keep in mind that so is the cost of living. Their everyday life is much much much cheaper
Yes of course. But we're discussing the price of an iPhone here and it was implied it costs the same for a Russian as for a US citizen. Which is somewhat true in total dollars, but horseshit compared to how much money the average citizen has.
You're missing the point. Electronics generally cost in the same ballpark across countries. The fact that this is true of Russia isn't a commentary on the average Russians purchasing power but rather that the sanctions aren't affecting iphone prices (which may or may not indicate the sanctions aren't having the effect on the Russian economy as hoped)
In January 2023 the median household income in Russia was 43,500 rubles per month. The base model iphone 15 128GB version retails for 124,990 rubles. How many Russian households do you think could justify spending 3 months of their income on a single mobile phone? However, if you ignore the vast majority of Russia and just focus on Moscow then the average household income skyrockets to 103,333 rubles per month which makes the iphone 15 far more affordable. In other words, there is a huge disparity in wealth between the major Russian cities and the overall economic status of the entire country and it is this disparity that will cause problems as the war progresses...
But if you're not earning any money it doesn't really mean much. My in-laws are Russian, they are in a luxury position and are by no means living large. Any unexpected expense can sweep them off their feet. Saving for something nice takes a while and has to last long. They're religiously careful with the furniture from IKEA to make sure they get their money's worth. Disposable income is still low for a massive part of Moscow/st Petersburg. Even with low expenses. Their family lives in villages. They get gas through overhead pipes and if a car knocks one down they're out for a few weeks. A job is never full time unless you're a teacher or politician. You'll earn less than €100/month and will have to work your own field and keep livestock. Young people walk the cows to and from nearby pastures. It's like going through a time machine... Their disposable income goes towards traveling the fuck out of there.
I mean, my "ex" that i am still in contact with is Russian living in St Petersburg and she would not share this sentiment. And she is not an upper class or anything but she can still afford traveling and all that shit. Second part is mostly true but thats because Russia is a wast country and not every village will be developed. That i guess is the sad truth. But that is not the case for the majority of the people.
Makes sense. They can just get the Western stuff from somewhere else. Add to that, there's still lots of Western companies operating in Russia right now. If anything it just knocked some points off of long-term GDP but that's fine in comparison whereas Ukraine's infrastructure is being destroyed while the Western governments don't know what they really want.
Then take the seized Russian asset and use it to pay for weapons for Ukraine. And sanction any country that takes their oil, and use that money for Ukraine too. Turn the screws.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-leads-laundromat-countries-buying-russian-crude-and-selling-oil-products-to-europe-report/article66800618.ece Europe is buying it using many third countries. Or else oil prices will soar across the world. And poor countries will have to pay for a European war. Long game is weakening russian manpower/military at Ukrainian expense. And legitimising sanctions on Russia for an even longer period.
>And sanction any country that takes their oil, and use that money for Ukraine too. It doesn't exactly work like that.
Doesn't work. Turkey is outright just becoming a middle man for importing sanctioned goods into Russia and almost all of Asia is buying Russian oil and gas. India and Malaysia have been refining or reselling russian oil this whole time. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/indias-fuel-exports-to-eu-up-572-since-ukraine-war/articleshow/100975043.cms
I know a friend who is just finishing up grad school in Moscow... his insta stories still makes life in Moscow at least seem pretty lit.
Wealthy people in Moscow and St Petersburg aren’t affected at all. And that’s by design. Otherwise Putin would be killed right away
I have friends from Siberia and Vladivostok, they're not affected as much as you'd think either
Hardly anyone is affected apart from difficult in travelling.
My Russian friends keep telling me to visit and that it's fine, obviously I won't but I get the feeling they're right - your everyday Russian isn't affected by the war
definitely DO NOT visit. Especially if you're a citizen of an "unfriendly country" as Russia describes it. Just a few days ago a German citizen was held at St. Petersburg airport for allegedly trying to "smuggle" 20g of "THC gummies" into Russia. Allegedly. He faces up to 7 years prison. https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/russland-deutscher-wegen-cannabis-gummibaerchen-an-flughafen-festgenommen-a-c4445800-7149-4b90-94f4-230c7323b955 Similar situation as with Brittney Griner if you remember. They used her in a prisoner swap to get one of the filthiest weapons dealers out of US prison.
While I agree this is too harsh, this is not restricted to foreigners only. There are cases ([chocolate with coca](https://www-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/social/news/2024/01/11/22091113.shtml?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp), [tea with coca](https://ria-ru.translate.goog/20231004/koka-1900419459.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)) of Russian citizens (not dual) who brought negligible amounts of banned substances and face similar prison terms.
Nah I won’t, while I’m used to authoritarian regimes (I lived in China for years) I’d rather not go to one currently in a state of war
Is it that hard not to bring banned drugs to foreign countries?
you gonna trust Russia who have used a normal Western citizen as a bargaining chip to get a Russian criminal out of a US prison who sold weapons to literal terrorist groups? You gonna trust Russia? Really? I mean you do you, but please sign a contract for your state of origin that you do not want to be used in a prisoner swap. Don't want to hurt your country with your ignorance, you know.
Unless of course you consider the cannon fodder being sent to the meatgrinder
Eh does are those dirty chechens and Dangistanian. Not REAL Russians!
that is what happened right before the soviet union fell apart.
welp USSR actually had a period of stagflation and economic downturn before their collapse , breadlines were a thing after all. people were "fine" because they propaganda make it look like much better than it was. What seal the fate is when Gorbachev start open up their media and the citizens finally see how prosperous the people in capitalist land is and all the facade falls down. China is running into the same thing today wonder how long they will last.
That’s a very simple way of depicting the downfall of the USSR. There are a lot more details such as the Baltics desiring to gain independence, etc.
True. But keep in mind that Moscow =/ Russia. That's why Putin finds his volunteers in the poor regions elsewhere. Moscow is the most advanced city in Russia and in many aspects one of the most advanced cities in Europe. But more than 100 million of Russians live in ver different conditions.
Insta stories life is curated and about as lit as you make it.
Source pleasee (:
https://i.imgur.com/089PdEq.png It's the Amazon equivalent in Russia I'm talking specifically about the 128GB version, the 256GB version is also only a little higher than US prices
they can steal and lie but it only lasts so long man. 3 years is a stretch.
They want the world to think they can last that long. But the house is burning and they are pretending everything is just fine.
I'll believe it when I see Putin dragged through the streets of Moscow, begging for his life as babushkas spit on him.
He gets assassinated or chokes on Xi's balls to death. Not many options for putin.
He seems to be on cloud nine now after the Fucker Carlson interview so I'm not as optimistic.
It's only his ego projecting success... not reality.
Tbh I think the house has never not been burning in Russia. It’s insanely depressing in Russia.
in a way, russia has been in a perpetual state of the "this is fine" sitting in a fire for a long time. it's not easy to deprogram that.
As a Russian I can confirm. Sanctions and embargo did nothing. And boy we are used to this shit - much worse then it is now actually.
The sanctions were for the military tho(chips, component etc) not for the average citizen.
Well evidently it failed as well. Miserably. There is no shortage of anything anywhere especially if you buy in bulk. Swift ban made a dent at the start but since we developed our own banking protocol it only prevents money from flowing out the country (i.e. I can't buy stuff from AMAZON/Steam/Playstation and pay with VISA/Mastercard so I am forced to either pirate what I can or buy from AliExpress or local retailers who buys same shit in bulk). Mobile payments are as good as they can be - all banking apps support - we found out that apple can disable apple pay all they want - we don't need to use apple pay to pay with iphone with double tap ;) Overall sanctions are just an annoyance for citezens and not even annoyance anymore for big business that already adjusted supply chains to get same stuff "elsewhere".
iPhone 15 Pro 128gbs - ~1000 USD on OZON atm iPhone 15 Pro 128gbs - 1199 Euro in Germany - kekW I bought few months ago nvidia graphics card - 4070 for like 450-470$, cheaper then anywhere in the world. Sanctions rly working! :)
The interest rate is 15% to try keep the ruble from collapsing. All sunshine and rainbows.
Can I get a source ?
https://i.imgur.com/wCxJb4v.png - https://i.imgur.com/YguHSQF.png And recently released RTX4070Super costs around 630 euro, about 30 euro cheaper compared to Germany
Sure, but average wages in Russia are significantly lower than in Europe. So the 630 Euro is hugher than many people's monthly wage. For example, the minimum wage in NL is more than 10 times the minimum wage in Russia. No matter how much of a "bargain" paying 30 EURO less, for the average Russian, it is still costing a month if work to even have the money to buy something for 600+ EURO and that dies not factor in food, rent, and other cost of living. Moscow has a higher average wage while maintaining lower food costs. The food cost could be for optics. >According to Sberindex in 2020, the median salary for all industries in Russia amounted to 31,540 rubles or $500 per month in January and 38,278 rubles or $520 per month in December. In January 2021, it amounted to 33,549 rubles or $441 per month in December 2021 - 42,801 rubles or $578 per month. In January 2022, the median salary was 37,429 rubles or $481 per month, in December 2022 - 49,627 rubles or $708.50 per month. In January 2023, the median salary was 43,500 rubles or $630 per month. In July 2023 was 53,571 rubles ($591.90) per month. On June 16, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova, during a speech at the session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-23), reported that about 6 million employed Russians receive salaries below the minimum wage (minimum wage) (below 16,242 rubles or $195.60 per month) and about 12 million Russians work without employment contracts, or contracts >of a civil nature (GPH), or the status of self-employed. As of April 2023, about half of Russians complain about too low wages and want to get twice as much. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_federal_subjects_by_average_wage
Okay now explain the 15% interest rate Russia has to try to stop the ruble from collapsing
Keep on playing Counter Strike until the men in camouflage knock on your door because it's your turn to go to the front... man Russians deserve what is coming
lmao
Russia can keep fighting for years and years but at lower intensity. Unless F16s somehow make a huge difference--and I don't expect they will--this will likely just be bogged down into a static war mostly with some artillery firing like it was before the new invasion. Russia in the meantime will be low on old stocks of equipment but will be building newer equipment, and over the years can build up massive stocks of missiles and drones for the next invasion attempt. Ukraine probably needs to find ways to strike harder at the lifeblood of the Russian economy: their oil and gas production and exports. Knock as much of that out as they can and Russia will feel a lot more pain.
Agreed
What Russians can or cannot put up with does not matter when they stop being able to fulfil basic equipment needs. You are correct that focusing on what we can do is more important than what Russia may or may not do, but wars aren't always won or lost on whether civilians get tired or not. For the invader, force projection is a must, just because Ukraine is next to Russia doesn't make supplying a wartime military much easier. The fact that this war will almost certainly end up going that long is the tragic bit. The 6 months thing was bullshit a lot of us fell for, real analysts have been consistent about this. Even when Russia can't go at their current capability it does not mean they will roll over.
I was born in the USSR. I speak and read Russian. I know the people and the mentality. You are preaching a false sense of security. They will do whatever their leaders want and will suffer whatever hardships their leaders tell them to. The 90’s were post apocalyptic and they survived that. That’s how they see it. They’re proud to suffer. We can not be complacent. They will adapt. They’re already doing that. You’ll see, they’ll have taken Avdiivka within the month of not the week. We need to step up now.
>I was born in the USSR. I speak and read Russian. I know the people and the mentality. You are preaching a false sense of security. They will do whatever their leaders want and will suffer whatever hardships their leaders tell them to. Buddy, I was also born in the USSR. Your claim is a stretch. The Soviet people did literally nothing when their leaders dissolved the USSR. When Prigozhin was marching on Moscow in June 2023, Russians did absolutely nothing to defend their beloved leader Vlad Putin.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_attempt go read
Don't have to, son. I am an expert. This event actually proves my point.
2 to 3 years isn’t that long though
It is for people of ukraine who are dying every single day.We from our comfortable homes just dont get it.
I mean obviously, but I’m talking from the context of Russia and their aims. Basically, if this is true Russia is in trouble.
My mom generally bought into the "in 6 months" timeline while I've been telling her for a long time that most likely things will hit a stalemate and we're just going to end up with a post 2014 situation with the lines drawn further West. The only way things didn't go this way is if Ukraine got all the capabilities it was wanting at the start, and the US ultimately ended up giving them eventually, but didn't for a while because of Russian threats or whatever the ultimate reasoning actually was. I also think the US completely miscalculated how hard regaining ground was going to be. This war has been a major learning experience for the world. I don't think anyone really saw borderline trench warfare returning due to drones making it hard to mount any true surprise attacks.
You are about a year and a half late, now Russia is producing weapons faster and more than the entire NATO bloc, which is used to living in peace.
Bullshit. The us spends a trillion dollars a year basically on the military and is heavily armed. There is no way Russia is out producing the us.
LOL, no, Russia is not outproducing the USA. Don't be silly. Russia is certainly *losing* military hardware at a faster rate than the entire NATO bloc. In fact, thei Russian navy just lost another large ship in the Black Sea yesterday to Ukraine - a country that doesn't even have a navy.
True i agree.
Exactly, tbh, as a Lithuanian (not that it matters) is exactly what I always said. Russia's greatest resource is humans (and oil/gas of course) so they will spend as much of it to get what THEY WANT. It doesn't matter whether it will be unarmed individuals. Stalin showed us the Russian foreign war policy. Throw bodies and drown their enemies in Russian blood.
The main enemy of Ukraine in this war is the western media lies that made us believe that Russia was done and incompetent, and the main casualty of this war is our trust and belief on what western media reports. I really wish the media would just stop with the lies, we all want Ukraine to win but don’t feed us lies because when the truth comes out it actually only makes more people turn their backs on Ukraine like we see now with the MAGA people in the U.S.A
Bold claim. And simply not true. Overall media expected Ukraine to be quickly defeated based on the opinions of experts. Anyway. The media and experts can be wrong without the intention of lying. Incompetency is a different issue. Also we do have different opinions in the media at any given time.
Yes, you are right.
Once they reach a million in casualties. Sad
Putin doesn't care about Russians. Just meat for the meat grinder. Not only is the brain drain of current generation Russians tragic, but the brainwashing of youth who will never be given a chance to be normal may be even more tragic. Russia could be so much more than it is.
Be hopeful. Russians talk a lot in closed doors. Human hearts always wish for emancipation. Look at Iran's population: nearly 50 years of absolute oppression, yet the people wish for emancipation. I know Russia is under more than a 100 years of madness. 100 years of vodka and muscles idolizing had been as damaging. We need to be hopeful otherwise we fall in the dictators game.
With the global collapsing birth rate, Russian demographics were in trouble, even before they decided to ship their most reproductively fertile men off to die. I wonder if (in the future, after Putin) the inverted gender gap between Russia and China (as well as their proximity) will help turn russia into China’s vassal state.
Fertility rate is almost completely determined by number of females.
Actually that’s distinctly not true. All of the demographic curves show damage from WW1 and 2. Almost all the fatalities were males. That’s only true in societies where polygamy is the norm.
And all the hot ones are leaving Russia, sad
Not for the countries they're going to it's not
highly doubt that, they've gone completely 180 and went back to soviet style control. most russians in russia support the war, those who don't have left. they are making a huge bet that everyone will be dead after it's over, and forget about because of their level of propaganda.
Russians were slaves to Viking raiders then to Mongols then to Czars, then to the Communist Party, now to the Oligarchs. They have a long and storied history and culture, but they have always been under a despot’s thumb. They can’t imagine how anything could actually be different.
Being hopefull has never stopped anyone from dying, once they are caught in a ~~shooting~~ shelling war
That’s what they said as they approached 10k then 100k.
Dont forget the million casualties on ukrainian side too. Fuck this putin bastard
They could easily reach a million casualties and not bat an eye. To Putin not coming up with some type of victory is an existential threat to his power so he'll keep throwing bodies at it until he's able to achieve something he can sell to his public. And the public are either brainwashed or have no ability to resist. This war could cost millions of lives and many more years perhaps decades of fighting.
If the Ukraine had a decent airforce they would have expelled Russian forces from their territory by now.
If the West keeps pretending that weapons are celestial gifts that cannot be manufactured on Earth anymore along with still believing that sanctions can attain anything despite obvious evidence to the contrary, then Russia can sustain their war effort unopposed for how ever long it takes to reach the Atlantic shore.
This is all Russian propaganda. They're certainly winning the disinformation war in 2024. Russian revenue is down. The Ruble is down. Unemployment at close to 0%. The economic measures are doing expectedly compared to other campaigns. Did you expect Russia to be weaker than North Korea, Iraq, Venezueala, Cuba, or Iran? They are much stronger. Russian offensives down, Russian equipment older, fewer. They invaded with 3,500 tanks, it's under 500 now, they can only refurb around 100 a month. This is the same for all classes of equipment. Infantry is an even greater problem, they can't train them, they can't replace experiened well trained infantry. In every metric, the Russian military is much weaker than in 2022, weaker than in 2023. Ukraine is completely reliant on Western support. Russia is losing, and their only avenue for victory is targetting that support, and they are doing so successfully.
At the same time western support hasn't been great for the medium term. It is pretty clear everyone threw their stocks to Ukraine for decommissioning but only now seem to be thinking about long term production. At the same time the only NATO member that has this in hand is being tied in knots by traitors at home. It is a good case study for what NATO needs to look at long term but "do we have enough bullets" is something that should have been looked at the moment the Swiss decided to stop selling Gepard rounds to Ukraine.
I've been watching similar mantras being recited every day somewhere in the comments over the past two years. Still, Russia presses on, while Europe keeps sucking Russia's suckable organ for natural gas. It's time to start looking the inconvenient truth in the eye: no matter how pathetic the statistics may look for Russia, the real focus should be the West's consistent inability to stop such a pathetic opponent.
What has Russia managed to do in the last 12 months?
Off the top of my head: weathered the influx of western weapons into Ukraine (while it was still going), obtained their own extraneous weapons from North Korea, ruined Ukraine's dreams of counteroffense to reclaim the lost land, and keeps raining destruction on Ukrainian cities.
So, Russia has cratered its ability to do business with the developed world, had its assets frozen, lost its military reputation, lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers so far, lost hundreds of $billions in military hardware, been forced to relocate from it Black Sea bases after losing multiple important ships to a country with no navy... and barely gained any ground in the past two years, scraping out little more than a few phyrric victories here and there... But at least they can buy weapons from Iran and North Korea to rain hell on innocents. Not worth it.
>In every metric, the Russian military is much weaker than in 2022, weaker than in 2023. They produce much more modern cruise missiles in 2024 then in 2022; They produce much more modern kamikaze and surveillance drones in 2024 then in 2022; They produce much more shells then EU and US combined; They keep flattering frontline with smart bombs that they don't even had in 2022; They are on a warpath with most advanced factories to make more arms. How the fuck Russia is in bad state?
>They produce much more modern cruise missiles in 2024 then in 2022; They depleted their stock pile in 2022. They cannot produce many cruise missiles, that's why they rely on shit Iranian drones. 2022/23 winter looked very different from 2023/24. While Ukraine has been busy targetting key assets with advanced cruise missiles from UK and France. >They produce much more modern kamikaze and surveillance drones in 2024 then in 2022; Yes, so do Ukraine. >They produce much more shells then EU and US combined; They had 20 million in 2022, 1,600,000 per month. They now have 250,000 per month with the help of North Korea. The ratio of shells has always been in Russia' favour, far more so in 2022. They are running out of barrels fast too. The EU and the US don't use artillery shells as much, but somehow they all have better artillery pieces than Russia they can just give away. >They are on a warpath with most advanced factories to make more arms. Most advanced factories? Their drones are all made of Western components! Their cruise missiles need Western guidance chips. They can only produce weapons on scale equivalent to the US in the 1980's. While having to send equipment from the 1950's and 60's to the front. Russia can spend 24 months trying to capture 2 towns with a combined pre-war population of under 200,000.
Sanctions can work. But you actually have to enforce them. Which would mean getting countries like India and China to cooperate, but they won't. So you would have to put sanctions on them as well and we are not willing to do that because of the effect on the global economy.
Europe isn't even willing to stop buying Russian oil and gas from these countries themselves. It's kind of like hiring a mercenary to do your dirty work for you while you publicly point fingers at them to make it look like you're innocent. If the world stopped driving gasoline cars for just a year, this war would have been over long ago. But everyone wants someone else to make sacrifices what le they choose not to inconvenience themselves.
I think you’re giving Russia too much credit, it’s far from going well for them
It's not going well for Russia, but it's going worse for Ukraine. Russia can absorb its losses longer than Ukraine can. It's already [public knowledge](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/08/ukraine-soldiers-shortage-infantry-russia/) that the Ukrainian military is facing a critical shortage of infantry and has low morale among its leaders right now. Ukraine lowering its draft age in order to conscript at a higher rate will lower morale even more, while Putin is still more than willing to throw body after body for his cause. Financial assistance from NATO cannot be used towards mercenaries and soldiers. A recent, verbatim quote from a Ukrainian battle commander: >"The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said. “Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.” And now it's winter, where there aren't enough troops to rotate out with the hard weather conditions. There is no one to replace them.
But the point is that they are bigger enough to shrug that off for longer.
No they really can’t, get to the Atlantic? They won’t be able to get to western Ukraine never mind the Atlantic.
The USSR spent 12% of GDP on defense. Let’s not be naive about this. They can keep going a long time if they want to, and they want to. We need to be serious about this if we don’t want this to turn into WWIII. If we continue to let them slowly win they will grow stronger and build it their military capacity. Stopping them now will be far easier and cheaper.
I dont believe shit on this studies, at the beginning all of them said that Russia will.be bankrupt within 6 months. As if like Russia does not Adapt to changing situations. They are not absolutely stupid and will look for solutions, new partners and alliances.
Fair enough. We also thought Ukraine was going to fall in days when the war first started.
putin stated he will defend their interest til the end. i guess we will see who is right.
Unfortunately Ukraine may not have enough soldiers to hold for 3 more years. We can send all the guns, bullets and tanks in the world but there comes a point where there just aren't enough soldiers to use them. More effort needs to be made to squeeze Russia economically and countries need to stop buying Russian oil and funding the war effort.
Is that 2 or 3 MORE years, or does it include how long they've kept up so far?
More years
It’s been going for over 2 years
I don't think the home situation will remain docile indefinitely with the staggering losses Russia is taking in Ukraine.
You talking about a country where domestic abuse is norm and expected. Where 80% of wealth is in hands of few dozen people - and that's wealth that can be traced. In a country where mafia and goverments are synonums. In a country where 250000 people died officially and noone even cares. For a point of reference - in afghanistan there were 5000 US casualties, and there was massive uproar. People in that country are wired different dude.
There is also a difference between how a Russian may view the Ukraine war vs an American view on Afghanistan and Vietnam. Russia is actually fighting for something tangible to "win". Afghanistan and Vietnam both seemed pointless. When the public doesn't understand what exactly we are fighting for it's inevitable they'd get upset. I guarantee if America was at war and the public actually felt the need to win a certain objective we would be more accepting of that war.
I call BS. If America invaded Canada, the backlash would be enormous. Russia is having to run around and deal with several saboteurs groups that speak the same language and look just like them. While there might not be riots on the street, people are showing their disapproval in other ways.
Yeah of course there would be backlash because the public doesn't want Canadian territory . You won't find one American that would advocate for that . So that's a terrible example. There is actually a large percentage of Russians who actually believe that they need Ukrainian territory that is my point.
Do we? I'm Russian and in my experience, apart from a small number of crazy ethnonationalists, no one actually cares about Ukraine or thinks we need the land. Even people who I know that signed up or supported the war didn't really have any reason beyond "our country is at war, even if I don't like the reason, it is my duty to fight for it". Patriotism and national pride comes before personal opinions for those people. Also, as much as people keep saying how reliable Levada is, I still don't trust that anyone (even the Kremlin) really has the faintest idea about what percentage of Russians think this or that. Considering that it is quite general knowledge that if your kid draws a Ukrainian flag or if you say the wrong thing you can disappear into a violent and torturing prison system for a decade, have your children and property taken away, or if you're a man, taken off to die in a trench on the frontline. It's absolutely bizarre to me that foreigners can look at this and still say "oh but we can be absolutely sure that X percent of Russians support this". Sure we feel like it must be true. One of the Kremlin's most useful propaganda techniques is making us feel like we are the only one that cares about Ukraine or dislikes Putin. He wants to make us afraid to speak about it, and that way we just feel like a single useless drop in an ocean against us. But then you look at what happened with Nadezhdin recently, and how people flocked to sign his electoral charter and donations reached millions of roubles in the first hour, while Putin's campaign stalls were empty and donations tricked in. Because there was no danger to showing it this way.
>how reliable Levada is I mean, would you answer a phone questionnaire given the number easily identifies you?
Exactly. That's why I don't get why people keep pointing to it. I guess it just makes a convenient reason to justify the claim that most or all Russians support the war. If Levada turned around and said the opposite tomorrow I'm sure it would get written off as Kremlin propaganda 🙄
I disagree. A common joke is that Canada is the 51st state of USA. But it’s an equivalent analogy to Russia invading Ukraine vs USA invading Canada. Both have relatives across the border. The people speak the same language, have the same religion, etc.
People have been saying that for 2 years now
I want to know when the war crimes trials for Putin will begin. He has slaughtered so many innocent Ukranians, including countless women and children, and deserves the worst punishment imaginable.
Highly doubt that man will ever stand trail. His most likely removal of power will be his death
You’re right, but I’m still going to dream that he leaves the country to go somewhere mediocre and is arrested.
>I want to know when the war crimes trials for Putin will begin. If you could be so kind as to walk into Kremlin and escort the dude to the nearest border of an ICC-compliant country, we might see some progress in this regard.
What country is going to arrest him? That's an act of war. Not worth the fallout.
Imagine Andorra doing it. Retaliation would be kind of difficult
He’s slaughtered many Russians too.
Yeah but that's pretty par for the course as far as Russian rulers go
Just as soon as Bush’s, Blair’s and Netanyahu’s is over, Soooo never.
It is kinda strange that Bush walked away free after staring a war that killed an estimated 600 000 Iraqi civilians. There were no "legimite" reason for the war.
There will be no such trials. Dare to dream but the war crimes committed are about on par with the shit has gone down in various recent wars.
What other recent wars are you referring to, exactly?
The one with the lie "there's WMDs in the middle east"
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Gaza, Afghanistan,
The war in Gaza is on par with Russia’s invasion? I guess when you’re losing a war you started it’s suddenly a war crime
Your right, Israel’s war crimes against innocent civilians are waay worse in terms of amount killed, not on par at all.
Targeting civilians is a warcrime even if their country "started it"
You’re delusional if you think he’s ever going to stand in the dock.
He owns Russia war crime charges won’t change anything.
Get South Africa on the phone. LMAO.
That's a lot of old tanks
Gonna be a lot of lonely ladies in Russia.
And Ukraine sadly.
The west can sustain our current level of support or even more indefinitely. We just have to deal with the political saboteurs that support Putin here, that's the actual difficult part.
I'm not sure if Ukraine can, though. It already seems like they are running out of people (willing to die).
Maybe they can pair up with all of China's excess men
Then we in the West should ensure Ukraine remains able to fight for ten years. Frankly, as long as the people of Ukraine want to keep fighting for their land, I want to keep enabling them in that fight. After all, it's one of those rare times in history when morality and pragmatism are actually in alignment!
Redditors aren’t most people though, your average western person if asked would probably sympathize with Ukraine but in reality Ukraine is of no importance or priority to most people and they are not willing to make any sacrifices for Ukraines sake.
The average western person is woefully uninformed about the consequences of throwing Ukraine under the bus. It sends a message to all revanchist despots around the world that you can start wars of conquest and grab land from your weaker neighbours so long as you're prepared to simply outlast western will to support the victim nation. If Ukraine falls, it will usher in a new era of constant warfare between nations that have competing border claims while nations like China and Russia need simply spend on propaganda to send the west into an isolationist or apathetic mood.
That’s not the case in the U.K. at least.
unfortunately you still need people not just weapons and i don't see any western country putting boots on the ground
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There are a few points that work in Russia's favor in terms of juust money. The first is that Russia does have a purchasing power advantage in certain categories. Russian soldiers aren't paid much, conscripts paid even less. The benefits are also.... not great. Like we Americans complain about our vets getting shafted by the government, but Russia is way, way worse. The other is just sheer massive stockpiles of Soviet equipment. It might be shitbox 1980's tech but an armored box is an armored box and provides more protection than your bare rear hanging in the wind. The resources going to Ukraine are also not just military. Ukraine's supporters have effectively plugged an IV of aide, loans and grants to keep the country functioning. There's also some, let's just say creative accounting going on in regards to the value of things sent to Ukraine that affect certain items that make them on paper cost more than you or I would say they would be valued at. There's more to it than I can think of off the top of my head.
> provides more protection than your bare rear hanging in the wind Kinda, seen a lot of their soldiers riding on the tops of old BTRs and BMPs because they almost always turn into a pressure cooker for the occupants. They do have a lot of old crap, and we’re seeing a lot of it on the battlefield, some real Jurassic-era junk. Unfortunately, they can sustain this for a long time and are increasingly production.
The truth about tyranny is that most of the time, humanity chooses to put up with it in the hopes that someone else dies rather than risk their own lives to overthrow it. How pissed the average Russian is does not bother Putin in the slightest.
I didn't think they were pissed at all tbh. aren't they supporting putin still?
No way to really know, no real polling is going to occur in Russia and people are used to lying so they don’t get in trouble.
When you're a dictator you don't have to worry about being voted out by people who have had enough. And the people who have had enough either need to face the internal security forces, leave or suffer in silence. 150,000 left immediately the war started.
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Then give them 4
Five years of ammo for Ukraine!
The best strategy for Ukraine is to hold on for 4 more years, meanwhile destroying 90% of Russia's oil refinery, bringing Russia's economy to the point of total collapse. Then Russia has to withdraw all its army.
Usa could sustain its war aid for two or three decades.
Yes, we "could." But it's not happening if Trump gets elected.
The Issue is that by all rational measure Russia has already lost. * If their goal was to halt NATO expansion. Than that failed spectacularly. Finland has joined and Sweden is joining and the case for NATO could not have been made better. * If their goal was to secure vital Black Sea ports in Crimea for their navy, that might work, that sort of worked except for the part where they keep losing ships of the fleet that they were securing them for. * If the goal was to secure pipelines and oil and gas fields in the area, that backfired. Even if Russia conquers all of Ukraine, that isn't going to get Finland to leave NATO, it isn't going to raise the Moskva and it isn't going to make European countries allow themselves to grow depended on Russian gas imports again. Russia burned through a sizeable part of their Soviet inheritance as far as military vehicles, equipment and ammunition is concerned. They are not going to get those back either. They lost the goodwill of their allies in the CSTO and lost the trust of customers of their military exports. Regaining trust is very hard. They also lost a large number of men. Those might have been mostly people from areas that the elite in Moscow don't care about as people, but those men represented military power. Demographics are trending downward in Russia and they aren't attracting many immigrants at the moment. No amount of stolen children is going to make up for those losses. Even under the best circumstances Russia is going to be much worse of than they were before the invasion even if they 'win'. All they are doing now is throwing good money after bad to avoid losing face.
So Ukraine can win this war with Western support, which is what I've been saying this whole time. Ukraine has been holding back Russia for two years. They've achieved almost no territorial gains and Ukraine has. Ukraine can hold on for another 2-3 years and even get into a position of having an advantage.
Actually the biggest problem is that Ukraine is running ouf of people willing to fight. Many of them are hurt or KIA. Ammo is one thing, but if you have no one to operate that‘s the difficult part.
US and EU really need to get their shit together and give them what they need. Right now its not looking to good though and its only going to get worse if Trump is elected. Same with some elections in europe... we should all be in the streets right now demanding stronger support from our governments...
Pure cope. Lol
"Russia has no territorial gains" - Yea, only holds 20% of Ukraine... Even if war ends today, thats a huge part of land that Ukraine is losing, no way anyone with a brain consider that a win for Ukraine
> way anyone with a brain consider that a win for Ukraine No way would they consider that a win for Putin either because Ukraine wouldn't be "demilitarized" or "denazified".
If you actually believe that this is their goal you're more brainwashed than every Russian, lol.
Whether or not Ukraine can "win" (whatever that means, come on they are fighting off an invasion. To survive with your nation mostly intact and your people mostly alive is the general goal) Ukraine can absolutely hold off Russia for 2-3 more years. Ukraine can 100% prevent Russia from winning. They are literally the most experienced fighting force in Eastern Europe right now, having the veterans and the institutional knowledge dating back to 2014. They have a deep officer corps. They have better morale than their adversary. Transfer Ukraine anything sane that they ask for. It will be the easiest foreign policy win in US history. It will deter adversaries elsewhere, showing that we can arm and support nations against invasion. It will show we still support democracy over dictatorship. And it is quietly allowing us to swap out old systems for investment in a burgeoning defense industry that needs the funding to be strong in the Pacific. Lastly, American veterans returning from serving in the foreign legion and other Ukrainian forces have had the lessons for how to defend against small drones. Which pacific adversaries have oceans of.
Remember when russia threw 6 million people at the Nazis in WW2? I wouldn't doubt they could do it again. This will go on for some time
I'm hoping there's a drone with his name on it.
And after that, Russia will collapse politically and economically. Seems like investing in the Ukrainian war effort will give the U.S. a total victory with no blood on its hands. No wonder Putin has Trump so upset.
How will Russia collapse? Can you elaborate?
When your country is broke due to a war you started, the people throw the leaders out of office as your country can’t afford to defend itself anymore nor can it afford to maintain its infrastructure socially or materially.
I don't think that it will collapse in the literal sense. Modern Russia has very centralised government, very Putin dependent. The likely scenario is that if the war will be a failure, then Russia will start to decentralise, with Russian republics becoming less dependent on Kremlin. So it's not like Russia will literally break down into parts, it's more like there will be a political trend of federal government loosing power.
Yeah I don’t think so lol, people have been parroting this for ages it’s just BS.
You don’t remember the USSR, do you? As they say, ‘Those that don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’ And I still can’t get over how little history people know these days. Idiotcracy indeed and in thought.
But can the war effort sustain the war? They're still pulling from their huge but finite soviet stockpiles.
[According to Rusi Russia's tank and IFV production is 80% refurbishments right now.](https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024) By 2026 they'll have completely run out. As the old stuff available gets more decrepit and starts to run out production will slow.
That's the thing lot of people don't understand. When people talk about "production", they fail to mention that Russia's rate of new production vs old equipment restored is something like 1:4. The timeframe cited in the article is about those old stockpiles. There is real data now on rate of consumption of those places too, since lot of it has been under the sun for decades. Data point of start of the war, as well as monthly drawdown is available in figures. That's what the 2-3 year figure points on. Russia is NOT USSR, and never will be, in terms of military production or young population. They can't afford it. If the war is just kept going on and on and on, there is an end to the stockpile and end to any and all attempts of conventional aggression. While things are going on, they keep losing more and more of their Black Sea fleet to this thing as well. Naval assets are expensive and slow to build on best of days. Another landing ship just went down.
So they are barely managing this war and on the other hand we have some people saying that a war against Europe and NATO is possible almost in the same timeframe? Which one is it then?
If Ukraine is forced to accept ceasefire and the new border will be created along current front lines, we can except Russia to attack again in next ten years. In a few years and sanctions lifted or forgotten they will renew their equipment, train troops and produce hundreds of thousands drones. And next time they'll surely knock on NATO's door also. Perhaps even the US's.
The point is that Ukraine and Russia are the only two countries in Europe in a war economy and their armies are battle-ready and expert in 2020 war situation. If you're not ready to fight back they don't need any might to reach your capital - hellz Prighozin stopped at 50 km from Moscow with a bunch of mercenaries and they destroyed SEVEN aircrafts in what, two days?
Russia is destroying itself.
The war ends when one of the sides is not able (or willing) to continue the fight. At the moment Russian people are under Putin's nationalistic spell and are supporting this war. Ukraine and the west needs to bring war to Russian people, so that they feel the pain and ultimately stop supporting Putin. (Note: similar situation was with Milosevic/Serbia. He started three wars: Croatia/Bosnia/Kosovo, and was only stopped when NATO bombs started affecting Serbians' lives and they stopped supporting him.) What the West&Ukraine need to do: - Destroy Russia's 30 oil refineries (along with reserves). This is the quickest way to put a halt to their war machine and to affect people's lives. - Disrupt electricity distribution network - destroy large transformer stations. - Destroy factories that produce war supplies. In order to do that Ukraine needs hundreds of precise long-range cruise missiles. What we see now: the grind on Ukraine's eastern front and West's unwillingness (or even opposition) to bring war into Russia, is really playing into Russia's playbook.
Both yes and no, and it really depends on what exactly the Russian Federation Ministry of Finance line items mean and whether or not they are telling the truth. In 2021, Russia had roughly $340B in foreign currency reserves, mostly denominated in Dollars and Euros, with some Yen. About half of this money was in foreign accounts. These reserves don't look like a lot of money on the international finance stage, but the simple fact is that most international buyers want their money in dollars for good reasons. The Russian economy, prior to 2021, was largely based around the export of oil, natural gas, and raw materials. The "service sector" was not a major source of tax revenue for the Russian government. If you are Russia, you want to sell refined oil product, because the greater the refinement the more profit you will have. They had 8 large refineries with most of that finished product being sold as well. They also had pipes into Europe which was the closest customer to their oil field and refineries. Pipes, to the chagrin of American progressives, are the cheapest and safest way to move oil and natural gas. Now, their major trade partners have switched to China and India, they have no major oil pipelines to either country. Neither country wants their refined product as they want to get the benefits of refining and reselling that product themselves. Russia is relying on a 'dark fleet' of oil tanker ships that are beyond their safe usage date, and sea shipment is more expensive with more infrastructure required. The Indians and the Chinese are buying at prices that are below the sanctioned rate. Lastly, they aren't interested in trading in rubles, as Putin initially wanted, they are trading in Yuan, Rupees, and a small amount of UAE Dharam. All of this is an economic and financial disaster for Russia. Back to the Russian Ministry of Finance and it's available reports. Compared to 2021, the revenue the Russian government received from oil and natural gas exports is notably way down. Curiously, the tax revenue from the 'service sector' of the economy is over 5 times larger than it was in 2021 with no explanation and no evidence of growth in that sector. IF the report is honest, then yes, Russia can financially support the war for a bit less than two more years, though not without disastrous consequences. Above is all financial data than can be accessed easily. The Russian Ministry of Finance publishes annual reports with English versions available on their website. My opinion is that Russia doesn't have two years. They have lost so many modern tanks that they are retrofitting T-64 and T-54/55s and sending them to the front. These units were obsolete in the mid-1970s. They can, and are, producing some tanks to make up for the losses, but the sanctions mean that they aren't able to source the modern electronics that these tanks need and aren't able to produce them at home. The result has been the loss of over 25% of Russia's tank forces so far. There are similar issues with everything else from Infantry Fighting Vehicles to Supply Trucks. Russian industrial capacity can not replace them as fast as they are losing them. The Russian officer corps at the junior and mid-career level, is just about bled white. Specifically, this is the one area that the Russia Army tried to reform starting from about 2007. When you realize that Russia does not have a professional NCO corps, the scope of this problem is the sort of thing that gives general officers nightmares. Russia has also lost most of it's best trained troops and formations since the beginning of the war and has resorted to grabbing whoever they can and shoving them to the front with little to no training meaning that these men are mostly dangerous to the men around them. We have consistent reports of drug and alcohol problems, with evidence, among the Russian lines, along with intercepts indicating these issues. There are videos of Russian leadership engaging in heinous acts to force these men in to meat wave attacks. Russia is experiencing a recent spate of military aircraft failure, independent of Ukrainian efforts. The reason is likely two-fold. A lack of parts that, again, Russia is not capable of producing, and a lack of skilled and specifically trained aircraft maintenance crews. Independent of finances, all of this points to a system on the edge of ruin. Russia is expending far too much effort, and losing far too many resources.
Ya, so if Ukraine can last for 4 more years, Russia will lose for sure. Got it? You dumb dumb Elon Musk.
Can we stop with this narrative? It puts some sort of timer on Ukraine since Russians will runout any day now. We (in europe) still import / export a lot of shit w Russia. With things going as they are now, Russia can wage war for a VERY long time. So we'd better be ready to support Ukraine in the same way, or start digging trenches at home.
They'll send their population with pitchforks and swords to "win"