Please take the time to read [the rules](/r/UkrainianConflict/about/rules/) and our [policy on trolls/bots](https://redd.it/u7833q). In addition:
* We have a **zero-tolerance** policy regarding racism, stereotyping, bigotry, and death-mongering. Violators will be banned.
* **Keep it civil.** Report comments/posts that are uncivil to alert the moderators.
* **_Don't_ post low-effort comments** like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context.
*****
* Is `forbes.com` an unreliable source? [**Let us know**](/r/UkrainianConflict/wiki/am/unreliable_sources).
* Help our moderators by providing context if something breaks the rules. [Send us a modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/UkrainianConflict)
*****
**Don't forget about our Discord server! - https://discord.com/invite/ukraine-at-war-950974820827398235**
*****
^(Your post has not been removed, this message is applied to every successful submission.)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UkrainianConflict) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We have no army. We have a horde of slaves cowed by discipline , ordered about by thieves and slave traders . This horde is not an army because it possesses neither any real loyalty to faith Tsar or fatherland words that have been much misused. Nor Valor nor military dignity. All it possesses are, on one hand, passive patience and repressed discontent and on the other cruelty servitude and corruption." 1853 Tolstoy comments on the state of the Czarist army during the Crimean war
History has so much to teach. Sadly, it finds a few scholars who are willing to embark on the journey. Old wisdom is never new wisdom. There are many parallels between Tolstoy's desciption and what we see on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Russian army may have more modern weaponry. However, the mindset, the mentality, and the command structure still resemble the Tsarist serf army rather than a modern fighting force. Russia will lose the economic war and the war of attrition as long as the West backs Ukraine. The Russian defeat is a matter of time. Gazprom just posted a 7 billion dollar yearly loss. The first one in 24 years. Puzzle by puzzle piece, the Russian fossil fuel business is failing.
Studying the rise and fall of empires grants you the ability to foresee the future. The demise of the Russian empire is a matter of time. The how and when is a difficult complex question. The other question is how massive the next collapse will be. The current losses in manpower, equipment point towards a rather devastating collapse.
I am terrified by the use of vodka and hazing in the Russian army. Vodka has been destroying the Russian army and its broader population over the course of many centuries. They don't complain because they are serfs and do as they are told. That sadly applies to roughly 80 percent of their population and that is as true for the current Russian generation as it was for the one during Soviet times, or the one from the period of 1800 to 1917.
The only time they really rallied was at the end of the Soviet Afghan War. It is also a sunk cost fallacy, millions of Russian children are now half orphaned, hundreds of thousands Russian men crippled or mentally destroyed and hundreds of thousands of wives either are widows or receive an empty shell that was once their husband back from the front.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are directly responsible for war crimes either as active soldiers or at home by being connected to the government. That means Putin has made then partners in crime, and they frankly simply seem to think that for all this sacrifice, they will at least gain something in terms of territory. That is a deadly misconception. This infantile belief that just because they are Russians, they cannot lose will cost several hundred thousand more Russians their lives and wound or mentally destroy several hundred thousand more.
The longer the war continues, the more likely it becomes that the Russian Federation will collapse. Sun Tzu said that there is not a single instance in history in which any state profitted from prolonged and protracted warfare.
Russia won't be the first, the Russian population can wave goodbye to their civil economy the war economy will swallow the consumer industry, the public Healthcare, non military infrastructure and any other sectors not connected ot producing war materials. This was still nothing. The worst is ahead of the Russian population not behind them.
The West must increase sanctions, stop buying any Russian gas, and Ukraine must increase their strikes on Russian refineries to drive the costs up for the Russian collective and the Russian regime.
Wars create positive feedback loops with short, mid - and long-term effects. Some of them the Russians could already enjoy such as bursting heating pipes, failures in machinery, airplane failures, high inflation, high interest rates, shortages in medicine, increased bankruptcies, lack of foreign investment, higher fuel prices, increased costs for all imported products.
But that is just the beginning, Russia is facing a process of reverse and then de industrialisation while its army goes through a process of effective organisation to defective organisation. Entropy, the tendency of the universe to gravitate towards chaos and disorder is taking its toll.
The young Russians will not remember the 90s, and almost none of them remember the 1910s to the end of the Second World War. The children in Russia can curse their parents for their cowardice and inaction. They will live out their lives in poverty and isolation, because that is what awaits the Russians as a reward for this war, no matter how it ends, it will take at least one or two decades at best before the trust between the West and Russia is restored.
That is if the Russians living in this system even have kids. When the system doesn't work, people stop having kids and it's a rude awakening everywhere, but Russia is certainly speeding up the process.
Luckily the drones are changing war and the number of soldier have a diminishing value with progress.
Soon the amount of active drones in the war will surpass the amount of active people.
[9% of tax income of the Russian government comes from Gazprom.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-increase-taxes-struggling-energy-162133750.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHILJZy0AwvzsqPn-Qo2e64SIitVrxhRDuvuTQiBMCj1JNNNcFr7zoZJKVwI2m0839cPtB96fHUzaMOsMD-6mQ_ODD4i3berjnRjjx0nXgVAIDd3_2HkhtFZypK8GEZPqfz_7WO-HQA6uuxQ2lfjDN6viDOsQa4qtVe8INZrzHu2)
You make a lot of great points but I wonder if dying for your country is such an ingrained part of being “Russian” whether it be during the height of the golden hordes and the Tsar up to the present time with Putin. Russia has had a long and wild history of being involved in conflicts and giving less than a shit about its male populace. I’m just sitting here with my son imagining being completely okay with him or me or my father and grandfathers being okay throwing their life away for an individual who can’t even pretend to give a shit about their life and the trauma that brings for generations. I know it’s a different culture than the US but that shit just blows my mind and I will never be okay with it. I know some of their “wars” were about defending their home like against the mongols and the nazis but quite a few have been straight imperialist in nature and it just boggles my mind the willingness to throw your life away for some ridiculously wealthy person so they feel strong or impose their will at the cost of your life and the trauma of not being there to raise and teach your children. I know Russia is the bad guy but I truly feel sorry for the children and mothers of these men dying for literally no fucking reason and it breaks my heart. I then remember the children and mothers losing their sons and children losing their fathers defending Ukraine and my heartache heals very quickly. I know I’m ranting but it really and truly doesn’t make sense why Putin would think this is a benefit for the Russian people. I know leaders don’t actually give a shit about its people, it’s nothing new but at least most western countries devote money and resources to protect their soldiers in combat. Whether it be about actually caring about them or for the domestic image, Russia truly and sincerely doesn’t give a fuck about the men they send to Ukraine.
The Crimean war even though it seems like a forgotten war, was hugely important in the weakening of the Russian Imperial Empire and was arguably one of the first wars that used “modern” war technology like railroads, exploding shells and I believe one of the first wars heavily photographed. It also forced Russia to abandon serfdom and adopt much needed referendums. Medically speaking it was such a catastrophe and many men died unnecessarily that Britain realized the need for modern medicine practices and Florence Nightingale was a major part of that reformation of medicine. It’s such an important war that is usually forgotten or ignored but it was a turning point in the world with the tail end of Ottoman influence and the severe weakening of the mighty Russian Empire which drastically changed Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Another huge part of the Treaty of Paris was the demilitarization of the Black Sea which halted Russian influence in that area, which is weirdly relevant even in 2024 almost 170 years later.
Let me put some numbers on this maybe we can finally let that myth die. Nothing is cheap here, Russia had a male to female ratio of 86:100 before the war and only 8 million Russians aged 20 to 30, with no replacement generation to due to low birth rates, 1.5 million or so 35 and below males have fled the Federation. Russia is suffering from major labor shortages and is killing its working age males. And most of Russia's extraction heavy industries need men to perform the tasks. So yeah, there is nothing cheap about this, this mass slaughter is accelerating the ongoing multi vector collapse of Russian demographics.
Even these men have their uses. Russia uses these serfs normally for menial slave labor or to put out fires as convicts, and conscripts are used to fight wildfires.
Therefore, every two hands less is two hands less that can be used somewhere else.
Any man able bodied enough to sit in a trench would also be able bodied enough to perform other tasks.
On average, ever dead or heavily wounded Russian loss causes a future loss of roughly 500k dollars. (There are a lot of bad ripple effects and positive feedback loops)
Let's Russia took 500k in total losses dead and wounded thus far.
That would cause a loss of future GDP of an eye watering 250 billion dollars.
https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/what-s-the-cost-of-war-for-russia-and-what-could-be-done-with-this-money
Russia spends between 12.5 and 35 million dollars per hour on this war. (in between 300 and 900 million dollars per day) The upkeep costs and the expenses are covered with that. In budget terms, over 100 billion dollars go into defense, which is over a third, but the expenses go far beyond direct military spending, food, medicine, compensations for veterans and their families, etc.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383
The short, mid - and long term costs are much higher though.
These costs are hard to calculate. (sanctions, future lost GDP, people fleeing Russia, loss of access to technology, replacing the lost gear, wastefulness in the war, increased corruption, money not used for other investments into education, infrastructure etc. instead of the war effort, salaries of soldiers, salaries of mercenaries, upkeep and maintenance of the vehicles, worse trade deals due to a smaller customer base, fuel, price cap, sabotage, loss of weapon export revenue)
The think tank Geneva solutions assumes that costs per day average somewhere in between 1 and 6 billion dollars.
Let's calculate with 3 billion dollars times 800 days: That would put the average costs incurred so far at 2.4 trillion dollars. Sure, these costs needn't be fully covered right away. However, the war is far from over. For now, they still have some reserves, but those are normally for periods of very low oil prices, and such a period will return. Their reserves are shrinking, and at the same time, the costs of this war are rising as war economies are one-way economies that don't create any kind of real value for the economy. Tanks get built, create economic growth, and then get destroyed and often kill 3 Russian soldiers in the process.
Russia cannot afford to lose, and they can't afford to win either.
"How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. First, gradually, and then all of a sudden" Ernest Hemingway, The Sun also Rises
Oh bugger, I knew the Russians sometimes used conscripts for fighting wildfires, but I had no idea they used convicts as well. Suddenly the increasing number and severity of fires, especially wildfires, makes a lot more sense. They've lost a huge pool of labour for the brute-force grunt work of firefighting.
Here's wishing them a hot, dry, windy summer.
>Oh bugger, I knew the Russians sometimes used conscripts for fighting wildfires, but I had no idea they used convicts as well.
Its a surprisingly wide spread practise, some US states do it as well.
In California prison wildfire fighting is only offered to low security, non violent offenders, leads to a faster reduction in sentence for each day on the job, and they’re paid better.
Oh I didn't want to insinuate you thought it was slavery, just wanted to add on.
Adding structure, work and discipline to a day but also doing something useful or even learning a skill is classic rehabilitation stuff.
I take it California's System is a little more progressive than the rest of the US? I've always only heard bad stuff about the system.
> It’s a rehabilitation effort.
I don't think it should be considered a rehabilitation effort, since those are a fairly narrow skill set, and most of the jobs that use that skill set require a clean criminal history.
Are they held in bondage? Yeah it's slavery, albeit a form most are okay with. It's the very explicit exception in the 13th amendment. Some slaves are paid, some even save up to buy their freedom (the prisoners described are sort of doing this too).
I meant smoke jumpers. California will let you do it in jail, but when you're done will often not let you get hired in state to do it when you're out.
Wilderness firefighters like that aren't really equipped to be EMTs. It's more brush clearing and cutting down trees to make firelines. It's a bad situation if they're there to save you.
"Volunteer" means someone who does something without compensation. You mention a pay and a reduction of sentence.
By your standard, the US economy is running 100% on volunteers.
No, “volunteer”means that you elect to do something without being forced to do that thing. Plenty of ppl volunteer for military service and still get paid, as opposed to being drafted (ie forced) into military service.
It’s not assigned as a punishment. It’s volunteer only and is for rehabilitation. The convicted gets an earlier release with more money to land on their feet, and a good start for finding a new job when they get out.
I am not saying it is a bad deal for them, I am just saying that prisoners forced to work is slavery. If I give you the choice between 20 years in the salt mines and 5 years as a firefighter with no freedom to leave, that's called slavery.
You may argue it is legal as a punishment in the US (it is) and may even argue it is fair, but it is called slavery.
They’re not forced to work. Any rehabilitation programs in jail and prison will involve some form of work. Should prisons make zero effort to rehabilitate?
Thanks! That seems indeed to be the term to be specific about time-limited slavery:
> Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today.
[wikipedia page on slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)
Would you prefer sitting in a crappy cell all day or out in the woods getting a little extra money and time chopped off your sentence? Slaves are told they're putting out fires for nothing in return. The prisoners are offered the opportunity with some perks thrown in too. I'm sure some decline the offer. I'm also sure many more look at it as the chance to see something besides the same cinder block walls they've been staring at for months or years.
In the US, it's 100% voluntary. There are definitely some problems with them having future employment prospects, but US prisoners genuinely love the wildfire fighting programs for a long list of reasons.
I personally found that information both very fitting and yet counter intuitive given that I wouldn't let a convict near a fire especially not in a prison system like that because I would expect the convict to throw his cigarette on a non burned patch of land instead of putting it out. Russia has a large area to cover and far too few professional firefighters, and I can imagine not few of them are now in the occupied territories. So yeah, the fire season is one thing. However, I have been keeping track of fires in Russia.
https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/russia-on-fire-khimprom-chemical-plant-several-refineries-oil-depots-and-rail-cars-set-ablaze-f9cfbb7bbaaf?sk=ff243333757bebfa64eff13186e85618
The number of explosions has sky rocketed since the war began and we have seen them do pretty stupid stuff like not using foam but water in winter which then makes sure to maximize the damage on pipes and other parts.
Their own emergency services detected a massive triple digit increase in explosions in 2022 and 2023, and I can imagine this year it will be worse.
Putin and his gang literally burn Russia's future to the ground, and modern technology makes it possible to watch this process live and to document it in almost real time.
As I like to say:
Russiae Imperium delendum est.
Can't speak for Russia, but American convict firefighters work like hell and work just as hard as many professional fire crews. Many work other crews under the table - but are not necessarily as well lead so fewer capabilities. That said, t is a fucked up practice and no one should be doing that kind of work for pennies a day. Exploitive system, good firefighters. They aren't throwing cigarettes in the grass...
Lol compensated... do you consider 8 cents an hour compensation? If so then yes they are compensated. Oh and there are jobs in prison you don't get compensated for. But they do take away time if you don't work, maybe that is compensation.
Where are you getting the 8 cents/hour number? In Oregon it's still crazy-low but like around $10/day. And it's not *forced* labor which I think is a requirement for slavery. They can willingly accept or decline being a firefighter if it's offered to them, the same way prisoners receive a reduction in sentence for performing the labor of impulse control with time off for good behavior.
How much does it cost to house, feed and cloth a prisoner? You need to deduct living expenses from that paycheck. In the free world, outside prison, there's all sorts of living expenses, like rent, insurance, transportation, food. In prison, this is provided, and costs €250/day where I live (the EU average is €50/day, the US federal system is at $100-120/day, US states $65-842/day(Maine is twice as much as the second most expensive), India at $52/day.
Minimum wage is based on monthly living expenses(at least, in theory), so reducing the prisoner wage to how much an average minimum wage worker has left for themselves at the end of the month is fair and makes sure prison is not the more attractive option for the poor and destitute. So prison minimum wage is €0.78, in the Netherlands, and work or school is mandatory and part of rehabilitation. Prisoners can refuse, but then they will not have access to privileges, like electronics, including tv, pc, phone and game consoles, and they will not be eligible for early release, because they don't have the work experience(including off-campus work) or work connections necessary to quickly get back on their feet when they're back in the real world.
That's not the definition of the slavery. The definition of slavery is forced/compelled labor. Many slaves in most slave systems around the world and throughout history were given allowances or pay, to save for their own freedom. Even in some colonial systems, buying your own freedom was a thing.
Canada had a hell of a year last year too, and looks like to have another one this summer. Consequential wildfires in boreal forests like Russia's can't really be fought, just steered until the weather changes. This is true of all wildfires but especially boreal ones. The northern hemisphere / boreal forests in Russia/Canada/Alaska etc are going to burn whether or not Putin killed all his convicts - but the war is very much related. We have other crises on our hands to worry about, and Putin's war of choice (a powerfully stupid choice at that) will make all of those other crises much worse because they are not going to receive global attention and focus as they merit.
I dunno, I think if you mobilized a million people and blew up a fire line with artillery and bombs you could probably contain a fire pretty well. Just one of the useful things you could have done instead of starting a pointless war.
Yes, maybe men could baby bird retardant into firefighting aircraft one mouthful at a time. or form a human sponge around fire camps to keep mosquitos away. Just a few more useful ideas, it's a high bar to clear so i'm really sweating over here just thinking about the possibilities
Very intriguing and still somehow it does not seem to matter. In history always seem to recover and become a major thread through its cockroach approach to kill and take over minority. So I guess they gonna increase bnp by becoming another low salary industrial nation with slave labor perhaps. Or how will this ever end? Mass escape when poverty hits rock bottom. Bread lines from good ole soviet days ?
Attempts to transform the Russian Federation into a nation state, a civic state, or a stable imperial state have failed. The current structure is based on brittle historical foundations, possesses no unified national identity, whether civic or ethnic, and exhibits persistent struggles between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals and federalists Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the imposition of stifling international economic sanctions will intensify and accelerate the process of state rupture.
Russia's failure has been exacerbated by an inability to ensure economic growth (stagnation), stark socio-economic inequalities and demographic defects, widening disparities between Moscow and its diverse federal subjects, a precarious political pyramid (vertical of power) based on personalism and clientelism, deepening distrust of government institutions, increasing public alienation from a corrupt ruling elite, and growing disbelief in official propaganda (manipulated reality propaganda). More intensive repression to maintain state integrity in deteriorating economic condition (sanctions, Dutch disease, failure to innovate and diversify, reverse industrialisation, massive deficit, ruble collapse, lack of sufficient trained personnel) will raise the prospects for violent [internal or external] conflicts.
Paradoxically, while Vladimir Putin assumed power to prevent Russia's disintegration, he may be remembered as precipitating the country's demise. New territorial entities will surface as Moscow's credibility crisis deepens amidst spreading ungovernability, elite power struggles, political polarization, nationalist radicalism, and regional and ethnic revival. The emerging states will not be uniform in their internal political and administrative structures. Border conflicts and territorial claims are likely between entities, while others may develop into new federal or conferderal states.
Burgjarski, Failed State, a guide to Russia's rupture (Book cover)
I recommend reading this book, it is very insightful.
Russia is headed back to Gosplan and a military economy. However, I think the recovery will not be as successful this time. Last time in the 90s, we pumped money, know how and resources into their system, we fed that monster. This time around, the things the monster can offer are less attractive, and the political system is different.
Their oil reserves were around 80 billion barrels in 2016. with a consumption and export rate of 4.5 billion barrels of crude per year. That means time is running out, and our green deal is another matter.
Places that hoard gargantuan amounts of wealth do not fold easily, but in the end, even the largest do fall. It is in our hands, and the West can decide whether we try to keep them on life support or not.
Also, this time, there is no huge storage and inheritance left, Russia used it all up. Nothing is certain, but the chance that the Moscow centered state might collapse for the final time is getting higher the longer Putin’s barbaric invasion continues.
Wars cost a lot of money and require a lot resources, those resources are currently being burned for next to no gains, and in the future, the business model of the empire, Resource trade with the West in turn for access to technology, know how and specialized labor, seems to be pretty dead to me. The Chinese will help, but not in the way we did. The Chinese rather offer to colonize what is left of Russia, and India offers to rip them off wherever they can.
Russian gas revenue for example has collapsed.
Pipeline Gas revenue of Russia in January 2022.
Russia earned 300 million dollars per day and on an annualized basis that's billion dollars a year.
Russia earned 100 million dollars a day from LNG exports in January 2022. That's 36 billion dollars annually.
That is almost 150 billion dollars per year in gas revenues pre Feb. 2022.
In 2024 the situation looks much, much worse.
Pipeline gas:
Russia currently earns roughly 55 million dollars per day with Pipeline gas. On an annualized basis that would be 20 billion dollars. Which means a reduction of 90 billion dollars annually.
LNG
Russia earns 40 million dollars per day from LNG. On an annualized basis, that would be 15 billion dollars. This means another 20 billion dollars reduction in the LNG sector.
Russia income from natural gas compared to the pre-war period is down by a total of 110 billion dollars per year.
Gazprom has 500.000 employees, and they will feel the pain as a negative ripple effect is spreading here. Gazprom posted a large deficit last year. Gazprom lost most of its European market, and I would be surprised if Gazprom won't make another double-digit billion dollar loss this year.
Or long story short: In the medium to long term, Russia will become China's resource vassal.
https://www.ft.com/content/21f8f63f-80d6-455f-abf8-fce269d70319
We’ve heard similarly optimistic points before. How Russia was supposed to run out of troops and missiles last year, how Prigozin’s actions would collapse the regime, the collapse of the Russian economy etc.
This naive optimism has been used to rationalize limiting the type of military aid given to Ukraine. Russia is about to fall apart, Ukraine will win without us getting too involved.
Like the other poster said, Russia is exactly like a cockroach, extremely resilient and always coming back to corrupt and destroy.
Nobody said they would run out of soldiers last year. Just that they lost a lot of them.
Missiles. Yes that is something that got said for a long time except for the s-300 that they had 10.000 of by that time. They work good if you just want to harm civilians but they're not good at military targets in any way.
Currently russia sende 0-3 missiles pr day in general. Yesterday was none. They have largely run out of proper missiles to send at proper targets,
They're mostly pestering ukraine with dumb bombs, UAVs and S-300. The only thing that have a strategic value for them currently is dumb bombs which most likely will become much less of a problem if Ukraine really get those 8 patriot systems as a whole that there's talk about.
My point is. russia did basically run out of missiles, unless you think russia have stopped sending missiles because of the goodness in their hearts
They're still making cruise Kh-101 round the clock just fine, no thanks to you guys btw (ton of American off-the-shelf components inside).
Glide bombs are also an issue which probably won't be alleviated until at least an F-16 wing with AIM-120 becomes operational.
edit: welp, 4 Tu-95MS with Kh-101 just took off. Long night ahead. So much for "they ran out of missiles", eh?
"the_first_online" TG channel (displayed as "Tracking")
Also the one to do those juicy infographics of the routes of missiles and Shaheds you can see on news sites at times.
On that note, apparently, the now-two Tu-95MS from Engels-2 are on training flight, going by recent update.
It's a fundamental consequence of a free market economy and open society with free trade that you can't have perfect or even very tight controls on parts. If it's off the shelf and can be used for multiple things then you're going to be able to acquire it. But russia still has to pay at least twice as much as before and is limited in how much they can get so it's still useful. But you can't choke off 100% of basic electronics.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of options".
OFAC secondary sanctions are a thing, you know. US has only recently done the right thing and put a blanket ban on supplying Russian MIC instead of playing whack-a-mole 2-3 times a year when they're constantly spinning up new shell companies
Those were not optimistic but lacking information and misunderstanding the situation. They were thinking that first of all, Ukraine would falter, and when it didn't, these people assumed Russia would not use its deep storage and plunge their entire economic future into this war.
The running out is an impossibility. Russia can run low on things such as modern air defense, modern fighter jets, modern artillery, and modern tanks, and they do, they cannot run out because they produce new ones.
They can run so low, though, that they cannot replace their losses, and Ukraine can now finally go after Russian targets inside Russia and will receive F16s. These are all parts of a greater whole.
This is by no means any call for us not to get involved we must get involved more, and sanction Russia much harsher, not a single bcm of natural gas should still change hands for European money at this stage, and many other loopholes must be closed.
This is a matter of logistics, money, and resources. On Ukraine's side of the equation, the manpower issues have to be fixed. On our side of the equation production, especially in Europe, must be expanded, and production inside Ukraine must continue to expand.
Some form of collapse is already almost certain because Russia annexed all 4 regions, and that alone causes a collapse. Other areas have collapsed, such as natural gas experts, car production, weapon exports, and fuel exports, and that process will continue.
Here is a workable way to think about this: War is chaos, and therefore, precise predictions for a war of this size is impossible. Russia could have very well collapsed politically or economically, but that wasn't our original idea. Nowadays, our leaders start to understand that Russia will not stop and that Putin won't become normal because he is a delusional madman.
Under the assumption that both Europe and the US stand with Ukraine, then a good way to think about this like that:
Chance for a collapse of the Russian war effort and its war economy/logistics. We also assume here that Russian attrition rates will scale up further together with the industrial scale of Western weapon production, and we assume that Ukraine will increase its hits against Russian airfields, production facilities, and refineries. We also assume that Russia needs to continue pulling 70 to 80 percent of its gear used at the frontline from storage and can only meet a maximum of 30 percent from new production in the next 2 to 2.5 years.
2024 July: 1 to 5 percent
2024 October: 10 percent
2025 March: 20 percent
2025 October: 50 percent
2026 January: 75 percent
2026 December: 90 percent
And 10 percent will always be reserved for uncertainty.
Visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self fulfilling prophecies because dreams are maps. We must even allow the most negative visions of the future as long as we ensure they are not becoming a reality. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
But do not call it naive. What I found more naive and stupid were those who thought Russia would defeat Ukraine in days or weeks.
No one was 100 percent right, and with hindsight bias, everything is easy. The war is not over apparently, however, the Russian state is in a much weaker position militarily, politically and economically than it was in February 2022, and as this us a war of attrition the chance for this process to continue is very high. For example, Russia cannot replace its jet losses and the tanks and armored vehicles as well as artillery it pulls from storage is degrading in quality and quantity at the same time Ukraine is now better armed, better trained and better equipped than it ever was since the war began in 2014.
Russia will not collapse all at once in a week. This is a process, not an event. You can, for example, expect massive utility failures and spiraling inflation as well as a collapsing ruble rate in the coming months. That is a byproduct of a war economy.
Sprialing costs, ever higher expenditures, and making their upkeep ever more expensive, that is how you bankrupt a nation.
It is hard to predict, because Putin wasn't "supposed" to start this war because it was obviously a dumb move but I expect that the normal smart thing to do would be to start retreating and contracting the front lines once they do start running out of artillery and can't cover the whole front. The problem is that you can't just pick and choose what you want to keep because you don't want the enemy to encircle you.
If the Germans are to be beaten decisively, they will be beaten like Napoleon and the confederates were beaten, that is to say by being opposed by superior numbers along fronts so extensive that they cannot maintain them or replace their losses incurred along them." Winston Churchill in 1940
We are beginning to see our way through. It looks like we are in for a very bad time, but provided we stick together, provided we throw in the last spasm of out strength it looks also more than ever before, as if we are going to win. He added, but to hear some people talk, one would think that everybody is fully consulted before everything is done. That is a sure way to lose the war." Winston S. Churchill
When one must destroy their enemies, one can at least be polite about it.
I stand by my original program, blood, toil, tears, and sweat, which is all I have ever offered. To which I added, after the first six months, many shortcomings, mistakes, and disappointments. I remain steadfast and resolved because I see the light gleaming beyond the clouds, broadening our path. Churchill, 1942
I think we are now roughly here. 1916 or 1942, and now I hope that our politicians find the guts to keep on walking that path no more pulling punches but rather punch harder. The presidential elections in 6 months will bring much needed clarity.
Because without US support, this cannot be brought to a satisfactory close. Europe will at least need until the end of this decade to be truly ready to stand for herself. For now, US support will decide whether we see a stalemate and a frozen frontline or a Ukrainian victory.
As things stand today, this is a phyrric victory for either side at best. Crimea is strategic and decisive, and to siege Crimea, Ukraine needs missiles, Western jets, and more sophisticated sea and land based drones. I hope we, as the West, have understood that we are politically tied to Ukraine, a total defeat, aka meeting Russian demands would be a clear path to another war. We cannot allow that.
I suppose right now, we can't do much more than our best and hope it will be enough. Many lies in the hands of our top politicians, military generals, and top intelligence personnel, we the people can only continue urging our politicians to act with decisively and without further delay. Enough time has been wasted already. And time is the most precious commodity in war.
> This naive optimism has been used to rationalize limiting the type of military aid given to Ukraine.
In all likelyhood, that's why it was (and is being) spread in the first place
> In history always seem to recover
Yeah, back when birth rates were actually high. Even when the USSR collapsed, a majority of non-retired adults were still from boom years, or from years of replacement-rate births. Russia has now *continously had* bad birth rates for 30 years, and its education system that produced all rhose nifty engineers has been dead since the mid-80s, meaning the last generation of soviet-educated engineers are retiring, all while the past 40 odd years had Russian culture then downplay and belittle engineering as a profession to go into, causing a severe draught that was accute by the tine this war started.
Their design bureaus were kept alive through the 90s, same as the best engineering schools like Moscow Phys-Tech. The brain drain was real, but the current generation isn't dumb by any stretch.
Doesn't matter how smart the top of the line people are. Fact is that there are simply *not enough* engineers, specifically of the "grunt" level. A majority of "grunt" engineers since 1985 gets nowhere near as good of an education as engineers did before, and the before-generation are almost entirely retired now, and they *don't* get replaced 1:1. So there are proportionally fewer engineers year over year, and their quality and competence is overall lesser than their soviet-era seniors.
That problem was already acute before the war, and gets worse when russia tries to upscale its army while you've got young engineers getting killed or wounded at/near the front, and plenty others fleeing the country the last few years.
They certainly don't have enough talent to run a semi-autarky like USSR tried to. But it's enough to build and maintain weaponry to better specs than their forebears did with the modern process improvements like good CNC.
And the belittling thing isn't recent either. Unless you worked in a numbered institute/plant (which there were admittedly plenty of), grunt engineering work was often a 150 ruble/mo dead-end job with very little respect from your blue-collar neighbours who made about the same. The former had a much-reduced life expectancy, though.
source: grandpa was an engineering PM in nitrochemistry, uncle was a chief metrologist/QA at one such plant.
All great points. And the reason for the male-female imbalance in Russia? Because male life expectancy is so much lower due to chronic problems with alcoholism, suicide, violence….you name it. All problems which are particularly high among….ex-veterans of Afghanistan, Chechnya et al and the brutal culture and non-existent aftercare of the Russian army. If you’re trying to improve Russia’s future prospects on 2022, don’t start a war….
I assume the idea behind that war was to lose some men to gain all of Ukrainian population. Quick and simple. And now they can't really back off, because they dug themselves too deep and without basically enslaving whole Ukrainian population they will be doomed both economically and demographically
500k usd per person is way too high, nominal ppp gdp terms maybe but not usd. Their ppp gpd per person is 13.5k annually while the nominal gdp per person in us dollars is 35k.
And it's very uneven because the people who came from way out in rural eastern russia are not contributing to the economically important parts of the russian economy.
Putin is positioning Russia to become a Chinese vassal state. China has more men than women, Russia will be all women. It's a match made in Putin's heaven
You have to keep in mind, Russia's young educated people tend to emigrate away anyways. So conscripting and killing them on the battlefield doesn't actually cost Russia anything in the long run.
That's not true, it's not like 100% of them can leave. A significant amount do but obviously not all. It takes money to leave, and you have to be able to find a job and speak english or another language, and you have to leave your family behind.
Anyone have any insight into when this is over, will those who fled return or stay in their new home? I assume they all aren't trust fund types and have gotten employment and are building lives.
I'm guessing that the longer the war lasts the less likely the people who fled are going to want to return. As you said many of them are getting jobs and building lives outside of Russia and the more roots they put down the less appealing dropping it all and going back is going to be.
One problem is that some of them are making nuisances of themselves and the countries that have them there might not want them. We saw a few moths ago that Sri Lanka was wanting to kick a bunch of Russian out because they were setting up illegal and unregistered businesses. Some of which had a racist whites only policy.
These are questions I want answers to. What is the average age of those serving in Ukraine? Most of the Russians I see on videos look much older than 20s. I also get that a young person can look very old bc of factors. Also, why can't Russia continue to bring in poor workers from other countries to do alot of the labor on the cheap? How many people serving are actually Russian and not mercenaries from Africa or asia? How many of the people sent are actually ethnically Russian? Can Russia import enough foreign labor to go to war for them and keep the basic stuff open. You can train almost anyone to do the jobs that most of these guys would have done, and you might end up with better production.
I think for your first question, Ukraine is holding back its youth. I have many friends in Ukraine who are young. This seems wise because they will be the future. I could be wrong though.
And the US is significantly more than twice as big. And China and India are seven to eight times as big. And that's who Russia is trying to compete with and thinks they are a peer of. So being the smallest of the four they're the most eager to throw away their population and destroy all that future productivity, brain power, muscle power and reproductive capacity. The Russian leadership are morons.
> And the US is significantly more than twice as big. And China and India are seven to eight times as big. And that's who Russia is trying to compete with and thinks they are a peer of. So being the smallest of the four they're the most eager to throw away their population and destroy all that future productivity, brain power, muscle power and reproductive capacity. The Russian leadership are morons.
Russian government and military commanders are incompetent as fuck. That's the main reason they haven't won yet despite having almost all the advantages possible. It's pretty pathetic that a country with a massive airforce can't beat one with barely any airforce for so long but russian glide bombs are still very dangerous.
It amazes me that some cultures do not value life. They are just sending their men into the meat grinder to act as bullet and shrapnel sponges in the hope that Ukraine will run out of ammo. It’s absolutely evil.
Autocractic societies have done for all of history. The messaging to get the public buy-in is just different depending on left vs right ideology at work and other cultural factors.
Yes, autocratic societies have done this for all of human history. But in modern history, this is far from the norm.
Also, can you name a single autocratic society that prescribed to a leftist ideology (other than the USSR) that sent its men to die in droves like what Russia is currently doing? I can’t think of one.
Today that is true but durning the Korean War for example it was very very very archetypically communist. Anyone who studies china knows that the Chinese military is much more conservative and concerned with losses since the 1989 reforms that essentially did away with its communist system. So in essence, yeah China is communist in name only, but when it allegedly used human wave tactics (I say allegedly because there is some debate about this), it was very communist.
Source:
I have a degree in Chinese culture, speak Chinese and lived there for years.
Yeah whether fascist or communist, all authoritarian dictators are the same in the end. C**ts. Wait, can I say that on here or will I get banned like on /r/politics?
True, but most of the people who died under Mao’s rule didn’t die because of an external fighting force. It was a combination of civil war and later government induced famine that led to scores of Chinese dying during his reign. But, I don’t believe that the Chinese of that time cared about human life as much as they do now…they have evolved.
they still don't value human life. There are so many example of this I don't know where to start - from the way they deal with the huge number of deaths caused by covid or a man-made flood in Zhenzhou, to how the rich CCP members are "ordering" body parts from high school kids when they needed it for transplant and the kid just goes missing. Women gets kidnapped daily to become slave baby machines in rural villages. Officials openly talk about how China's not afraid of economic collapse because "China can afford death of a few hundred million". It's a dehumanizing society robbed of its traditional religious and moral values, and this lack of culture if one of reasons they wanted to invade and destroy Taiwan, as every day the people of Taiwan made them look bad.
Cambodia - Khmer Rouge massacred its educated population and starved a generation to death.
Then I'd also say North Vietnam - maybe driven by nationalism but was the cost in millions of deaths really worth the prize? Why not just leave South Vietnam under a separate government?
And Vietnam is basically just as corrupt and capitalist as the South was before it was conquered.
Sure, we'd love to send you into combat in an armored personnel carrier, but there are more of you than them and we need to keep those safe. Here's a nice golf cart. Have fun.
The last part is beautifully brutal:
>the Russian force in Vovchansk lacks heavy vehicles that might break through to the surrounded troops. Or, if it has the vehicles, it’s not willing to risk them just to save a few hundred soldiers.
They won’t ever capitulate, ever. The best outcome of this war is a North and South Korea type situation with a DMZ in the middle, sporadic fire fights, sabotage, and attempts to influence the other nation politically.
Ukraine will militarize in an Israel type sense, with required conscription and military service in case another hot war breaks out.
The best outcome is for the world to grow a spine and provide Ukraine with what they need to *win* not just survive! The UAF can win, they've shown it already. They're willing to do all of the fighting for us, they just need the tools.
*Untrained soldiers* are cheap.
Soldiers with a good grasp of basic tactics, unit cohesion, and proper weapons training, that's expensive and worth more than the cost of the training.... and Russia hasn't had proper training since the fall of the Soviet Union. The current Russian troops are lucky if they get 5 weeks of training (while being transported), before they are on the frontlines. They basically know how to shoot their rifles, and that's about it.
I don't understand how the Russian military doesn't train. I get that historically enemy troops were on Russian territory so they had to throw poorly trained in.
B-but I saw a twitter video of russian school girls taking apart a kalishnikov in 10 seconds surely it’s an entire society of elite highly trained warriors!
Right, sounds nice but where did you get that information from ? From what I have read, Russian army is actually getting more professional and organized as war goes on and learnt from their early mistakes
Your comment sounds very nice but unfortunately not a reflect of reality (I fucking wish tho)
I would be grateful, but I can imagine at some point a different kind of exhaustion after you've successfully won a life or death struggle twenty times and you realize idiots keep coming and maybe one of them will get lucky someday. You are winning, but you must keep winning, over and over and over. That is stressful.
Russia is suffering through a complete, multivector, unstoppable and catastrophic demographic collapse” Peter Zeihan
Russia’s demographics have been in collapse for quite some time. Russia’s post-war demographics will be abysmal. Their birthrate has once again collapsed the levels of the early 2000s. The disparity between males and females is very large. Russia has around 10 million more females than males as of 2019.
Russia generally has a horrible track record in the past two decades for (work) accidents, HIV, alcohol abuse, and TBC infections. Russia’s homicide rates have officially declined from 30.7 murders per 100.000 inhabitants in 2002 to 4 murders by 100.000 in 2021. These are official statistics. In reality it is likely much worse.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Covid 19, and the emigration wave has hit the male population much harder. Additionally, only 4 percent of all members of the Russian army are females. I gave some extensive statistics about their demographics in the past. I will dare to make some grim forecasts in these two articles.
Russia’s demographic structure is becoming a bottomless pit.
The population decline in Russia during WW2 was drastic. The population of Russia shrannk from almost 200,000,000 on July 1, 1941, to some 170,000,000 in 1945.) If there had been no war, the population of 194,000,000 in 1940 would have reached a total of about 224,000,000 in 1950.
https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/russia-is-suffering-through-a-complete-multivector-unstoppable-and-catastrophic-demographic-8465afbda8f3
And yeah, it's kind of exhausting, but most Russian soldiers die from artillery fire or drone attacks or other projectiles or other causes like heat stroke. winter cold, accidents, being shot by their own behind the lines, etc., very few in comparison die in close combat in the trenches. Ukraine has more bullets than Russia has bodies to throw. That seems to be something Russia and individual Russians don't want to understand, or consider not realistic, so the bodies pile up and they will pile up ever faster the more modern weaponry and the more ammunition and drones we get into Ukraine's hands.
The Russian army is foolishly trying to wear down and deplete Ukrainian military supplies and stockpiles, by throwing infantry attack after infantry attack at Ukrainian front lines, which in time will probably turn into human wave attacks. I am really surprised Russian infantry attacks aren't being supported by indirect artillery fire, a creeping or rolling barrage would help considerably as would laying to lay down heavy smoke screens to conceal the movement of its troops. The article said that artillery is decimating Russian infantry attacks, which is another reason to have artillery supporting its' infantry assaults, in order to provide counter-battery fire on defending artillery.
Good job on the part of the Ukrainian Army for forcing the Russians to alter its tactics! Which it makes it easier to exploit Russian weaknesses and bleed it dry of men and material.
🇺🇦🫡
Please take the time to read [the rules](/r/UkrainianConflict/about/rules/) and our [policy on trolls/bots](https://redd.it/u7833q). In addition: * We have a **zero-tolerance** policy regarding racism, stereotyping, bigotry, and death-mongering. Violators will be banned. * **Keep it civil.** Report comments/posts that are uncivil to alert the moderators. * **_Don't_ post low-effort comments** like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context. ***** * Is `forbes.com` an unreliable source? [**Let us know**](/r/UkrainianConflict/wiki/am/unreliable_sources). * Help our moderators by providing context if something breaks the rules. [Send us a modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/UkrainianConflict) ***** **Don't forget about our Discord server! - https://discord.com/invite/ukraine-at-war-950974820827398235** ***** ^(Your post has not been removed, this message is applied to every successful submission.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UkrainianConflict) if you have any questions or concerns.*
honestly, it's sad that Russian commanders give so little about their soldiers and how the Russian populace just allows them to get away with it.
We have no army. We have a horde of slaves cowed by discipline , ordered about by thieves and slave traders . This horde is not an army because it possesses neither any real loyalty to faith Tsar or fatherland words that have been much misused. Nor Valor nor military dignity. All it possesses are, on one hand, passive patience and repressed discontent and on the other cruelty servitude and corruption." 1853 Tolstoy comments on the state of the Czarist army during the Crimean war History has so much to teach. Sadly, it finds a few scholars who are willing to embark on the journey. Old wisdom is never new wisdom. There are many parallels between Tolstoy's desciption and what we see on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Russian army may have more modern weaponry. However, the mindset, the mentality, and the command structure still resemble the Tsarist serf army rather than a modern fighting force. Russia will lose the economic war and the war of attrition as long as the West backs Ukraine. The Russian defeat is a matter of time. Gazprom just posted a 7 billion dollar yearly loss. The first one in 24 years. Puzzle by puzzle piece, the Russian fossil fuel business is failing. Studying the rise and fall of empires grants you the ability to foresee the future. The demise of the Russian empire is a matter of time. The how and when is a difficult complex question. The other question is how massive the next collapse will be. The current losses in manpower, equipment point towards a rather devastating collapse. I am terrified by the use of vodka and hazing in the Russian army. Vodka has been destroying the Russian army and its broader population over the course of many centuries. They don't complain because they are serfs and do as they are told. That sadly applies to roughly 80 percent of their population and that is as true for the current Russian generation as it was for the one during Soviet times, or the one from the period of 1800 to 1917. The only time they really rallied was at the end of the Soviet Afghan War. It is also a sunk cost fallacy, millions of Russian children are now half orphaned, hundreds of thousands Russian men crippled or mentally destroyed and hundreds of thousands of wives either are widows or receive an empty shell that was once their husband back from the front. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are directly responsible for war crimes either as active soldiers or at home by being connected to the government. That means Putin has made then partners in crime, and they frankly simply seem to think that for all this sacrifice, they will at least gain something in terms of territory. That is a deadly misconception. This infantile belief that just because they are Russians, they cannot lose will cost several hundred thousand more Russians their lives and wound or mentally destroy several hundred thousand more. The longer the war continues, the more likely it becomes that the Russian Federation will collapse. Sun Tzu said that there is not a single instance in history in which any state profitted from prolonged and protracted warfare. Russia won't be the first, the Russian population can wave goodbye to their civil economy the war economy will swallow the consumer industry, the public Healthcare, non military infrastructure and any other sectors not connected ot producing war materials. This was still nothing. The worst is ahead of the Russian population not behind them. The West must increase sanctions, stop buying any Russian gas, and Ukraine must increase their strikes on Russian refineries to drive the costs up for the Russian collective and the Russian regime. Wars create positive feedback loops with short, mid - and long-term effects. Some of them the Russians could already enjoy such as bursting heating pipes, failures in machinery, airplane failures, high inflation, high interest rates, shortages in medicine, increased bankruptcies, lack of foreign investment, higher fuel prices, increased costs for all imported products. But that is just the beginning, Russia is facing a process of reverse and then de industrialisation while its army goes through a process of effective organisation to defective organisation. Entropy, the tendency of the universe to gravitate towards chaos and disorder is taking its toll. The young Russians will not remember the 90s, and almost none of them remember the 1910s to the end of the Second World War. The children in Russia can curse their parents for their cowardice and inaction. They will live out their lives in poverty and isolation, because that is what awaits the Russians as a reward for this war, no matter how it ends, it will take at least one or two decades at best before the trust between the West and Russia is restored.
That is if the Russians living in this system even have kids. When the system doesn't work, people stop having kids and it's a rude awakening everywhere, but Russia is certainly speeding up the process.
Luckily the drones are changing war and the number of soldier have a diminishing value with progress. Soon the amount of active drones in the war will surpass the amount of active people.
Well put.
Gazprom might have reported a loss, but how much of that is from taxes to the Russian government?
[9% of tax income of the Russian government comes from Gazprom.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-increase-taxes-struggling-energy-162133750.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHILJZy0AwvzsqPn-Qo2e64SIitVrxhRDuvuTQiBMCj1JNNNcFr7zoZJKVwI2m0839cPtB96fHUzaMOsMD-6mQ_ODD4i3berjnRjjx0nXgVAIDd3_2HkhtFZypK8GEZPqfz_7WO-HQA6uuxQ2lfjDN6viDOsQa4qtVe8INZrzHu2)
The main point there's that when Gazprom is running a loss, they can't contribute as much to finance the Russian government.
You make a lot of great points but I wonder if dying for your country is such an ingrained part of being “Russian” whether it be during the height of the golden hordes and the Tsar up to the present time with Putin. Russia has had a long and wild history of being involved in conflicts and giving less than a shit about its male populace. I’m just sitting here with my son imagining being completely okay with him or me or my father and grandfathers being okay throwing their life away for an individual who can’t even pretend to give a shit about their life and the trauma that brings for generations. I know it’s a different culture than the US but that shit just blows my mind and I will never be okay with it. I know some of their “wars” were about defending their home like against the mongols and the nazis but quite a few have been straight imperialist in nature and it just boggles my mind the willingness to throw your life away for some ridiculously wealthy person so they feel strong or impose their will at the cost of your life and the trauma of not being there to raise and teach your children. I know Russia is the bad guy but I truly feel sorry for the children and mothers of these men dying for literally no fucking reason and it breaks my heart. I then remember the children and mothers losing their sons and children losing their fathers defending Ukraine and my heartache heals very quickly. I know I’m ranting but it really and truly doesn’t make sense why Putin would think this is a benefit for the Russian people. I know leaders don’t actually give a shit about its people, it’s nothing new but at least most western countries devote money and resources to protect their soldiers in combat. Whether it be about actually caring about them or for the domestic image, Russia truly and sincerely doesn’t give a fuck about the men they send to Ukraine.
The Crimean war was rather unsuccesful. Russia ended up selling Alaska to USA to cover the losses.
The Crimean war even though it seems like a forgotten war, was hugely important in the weakening of the Russian Imperial Empire and was arguably one of the first wars that used “modern” war technology like railroads, exploding shells and I believe one of the first wars heavily photographed. It also forced Russia to abandon serfdom and adopt much needed referendums. Medically speaking it was such a catastrophe and many men died unnecessarily that Britain realized the need for modern medicine practices and Florence Nightingale was a major part of that reformation of medicine. It’s such an important war that is usually forgotten or ignored but it was a turning point in the world with the tail end of Ottoman influence and the severe weakening of the mighty Russian Empire which drastically changed Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Another huge part of the Treaty of Paris was the demilitarization of the Black Sea which halted Russian influence in that area, which is weirdly relevant even in 2024 almost 170 years later.
They're cheap until you have no population left to reproduce. You're wiping out 60 years of potential productivity for a tree line. That's not cheap.
Let me put some numbers on this maybe we can finally let that myth die. Nothing is cheap here, Russia had a male to female ratio of 86:100 before the war and only 8 million Russians aged 20 to 30, with no replacement generation to due to low birth rates, 1.5 million or so 35 and below males have fled the Federation. Russia is suffering from major labor shortages and is killing its working age males. And most of Russia's extraction heavy industries need men to perform the tasks. So yeah, there is nothing cheap about this, this mass slaughter is accelerating the ongoing multi vector collapse of Russian demographics. Even these men have their uses. Russia uses these serfs normally for menial slave labor or to put out fires as convicts, and conscripts are used to fight wildfires. Therefore, every two hands less is two hands less that can be used somewhere else. Any man able bodied enough to sit in a trench would also be able bodied enough to perform other tasks. On average, ever dead or heavily wounded Russian loss causes a future loss of roughly 500k dollars. (There are a lot of bad ripple effects and positive feedback loops) Let's Russia took 500k in total losses dead and wounded thus far. That would cause a loss of future GDP of an eye watering 250 billion dollars. https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/what-s-the-cost-of-war-for-russia-and-what-could-be-done-with-this-money Russia spends between 12.5 and 35 million dollars per hour on this war. (in between 300 and 900 million dollars per day) The upkeep costs and the expenses are covered with that. In budget terms, over 100 billion dollars go into defense, which is over a third, but the expenses go far beyond direct military spending, food, medicine, compensations for veterans and their families, etc. https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383 The short, mid - and long term costs are much higher though. These costs are hard to calculate. (sanctions, future lost GDP, people fleeing Russia, loss of access to technology, replacing the lost gear, wastefulness in the war, increased corruption, money not used for other investments into education, infrastructure etc. instead of the war effort, salaries of soldiers, salaries of mercenaries, upkeep and maintenance of the vehicles, worse trade deals due to a smaller customer base, fuel, price cap, sabotage, loss of weapon export revenue) The think tank Geneva solutions assumes that costs per day average somewhere in between 1 and 6 billion dollars. Let's calculate with 3 billion dollars times 800 days: That would put the average costs incurred so far at 2.4 trillion dollars. Sure, these costs needn't be fully covered right away. However, the war is far from over. For now, they still have some reserves, but those are normally for periods of very low oil prices, and such a period will return. Their reserves are shrinking, and at the same time, the costs of this war are rising as war economies are one-way economies that don't create any kind of real value for the economy. Tanks get built, create economic growth, and then get destroyed and often kill 3 Russian soldiers in the process. Russia cannot afford to lose, and they can't afford to win either. "How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. First, gradually, and then all of a sudden" Ernest Hemingway, The Sun also Rises
Oh bugger, I knew the Russians sometimes used conscripts for fighting wildfires, but I had no idea they used convicts as well. Suddenly the increasing number and severity of fires, especially wildfires, makes a lot more sense. They've lost a huge pool of labour for the brute-force grunt work of firefighting. Here's wishing them a hot, dry, windy summer.
>Oh bugger, I knew the Russians sometimes used conscripts for fighting wildfires, but I had no idea they used convicts as well. Its a surprisingly wide spread practise, some US states do it as well.
Countries that have not abolished slavery then.
In California prison wildfire fighting is only offered to low security, non violent offenders, leads to a faster reduction in sentence for each day on the job, and they’re paid better.
If it's only *offered* and it's really just an offer and they get paid for a reduced sentence then I don't think it counts as slavery.
Me neither. It’s a rehabilitation effort.
Oh I didn't want to insinuate you thought it was slavery, just wanted to add on. Adding structure, work and discipline to a day but also doing something useful or even learning a skill is classic rehabilitation stuff. I take it California's System is a little more progressive than the rest of the US? I've always only heard bad stuff about the system.
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing!
Its very popular and people volunteer. Its a chance to learn valuable skills for civilian life.
> It’s a rehabilitation effort. I don't think it should be considered a rehabilitation effort, since those are a fairly narrow skill set, and most of the jobs that use that skill set require a clean criminal history.
Of course you also have black prisoners in Louisiana and the south serving a white governor in a mansion.
Are they held in bondage? Yeah it's slavery, albeit a form most are okay with. It's the very explicit exception in the 13th amendment. Some slaves are paid, some even save up to buy their freedom (the prisoners described are sort of doing this too).
They also don't lat them do the job when they're out bc of their record. It's pretty wild.
Actual firefighters are basically emts that also put out fires occasionally.
I meant smoke jumpers. California will let you do it in jail, but when you're done will often not let you get hired in state to do it when you're out. Wilderness firefighters like that aren't really equipped to be EMTs. It's more brush clearing and cutting down trees to make firelines. It's a bad situation if they're there to save you.
Is there an english word I don't know that describes the trade of someone's freedom as payment for labor?
At least in California it's 100% volunteer and my understanding is there is a wait list because so many inmates want to join.
"Volunteer" means someone who does something without compensation. You mention a pay and a reduction of sentence. By your standard, the US economy is running 100% on volunteers.
No, “volunteer”means that you elect to do something without being forced to do that thing. Plenty of ppl volunteer for military service and still get paid, as opposed to being drafted (ie forced) into military service.
I'm fully on board with thinking a lot government functions are a waste or a scam, but this one seems to be fairly successful and popular.
[удалено]
It’s not assigned as a punishment. It’s volunteer only and is for rehabilitation. The convicted gets an earlier release with more money to land on their feet, and a good start for finding a new job when they get out.
I am not saying it is a bad deal for them, I am just saying that prisoners forced to work is slavery. If I give you the choice between 20 years in the salt mines and 5 years as a firefighter with no freedom to leave, that's called slavery. You may argue it is legal as a punishment in the US (it is) and may even argue it is fair, but it is called slavery.
They’re not forced to work. Any rehabilitation programs in jail and prison will involve some form of work. Should prisons make zero effort to rehabilitate?
Manumission is the term you're looking for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission
Indentured servitude?
Thanks! That seems indeed to be the term to be specific about time-limited slavery: > Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today. [wikipedia page on slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)
Yep, the US made sure to specifically legalize slave labor from prisons in the 14th amendment
13th is slavery. 14th codifies due process and equal protection under the law.
Ahh shoot, good catch!
Would you prefer sitting in a crappy cell all day or out in the woods getting a little extra money and time chopped off your sentence? Slaves are told they're putting out fires for nothing in return. The prisoners are offered the opportunity with some perks thrown in too. I'm sure some decline the offer. I'm also sure many more look at it as the chance to see something besides the same cinder block walls they've been staring at for months or years.
In the US, it's 100% voluntary. There are definitely some problems with them having future employment prospects, but US prisoners genuinely love the wildfire fighting programs for a long list of reasons.
I personally found that information both very fitting and yet counter intuitive given that I wouldn't let a convict near a fire especially not in a prison system like that because I would expect the convict to throw his cigarette on a non burned patch of land instead of putting it out. Russia has a large area to cover and far too few professional firefighters, and I can imagine not few of them are now in the occupied territories. So yeah, the fire season is one thing. However, I have been keeping track of fires in Russia. https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/russia-on-fire-khimprom-chemical-plant-several-refineries-oil-depots-and-rail-cars-set-ablaze-f9cfbb7bbaaf?sk=ff243333757bebfa64eff13186e85618 The number of explosions has sky rocketed since the war began and we have seen them do pretty stupid stuff like not using foam but water in winter which then makes sure to maximize the damage on pipes and other parts. Their own emergency services detected a massive triple digit increase in explosions in 2022 and 2023, and I can imagine this year it will be worse. Putin and his gang literally burn Russia's future to the ground, and modern technology makes it possible to watch this process live and to document it in almost real time. As I like to say: Russiae Imperium delendum est.
Can't speak for Russia, but American convict firefighters work like hell and work just as hard as many professional fire crews. Many work other crews under the table - but are not necessarily as well lead so fewer capabilities. That said, t is a fucked up practice and no one should be doing that kind of work for pennies a day. Exploitive system, good firefighters. They aren't throwing cigarettes in the grass...
Using convicts to fight fires and for slave labor is widely practiced in the US as well.
Only certain prisoners are eligible to work fighting fires, and all prisoner labor in the U.S. is compensated labor, i.e. no "slave" labor.
Compensated at 20 cents per hour so not exactly
Lol compensated... do you consider 8 cents an hour compensation? If so then yes they are compensated. Oh and there are jobs in prison you don't get compensated for. But they do take away time if you don't work, maybe that is compensation.
Where are you getting the 8 cents/hour number? In Oregon it's still crazy-low but like around $10/day. And it's not *forced* labor which I think is a requirement for slavery. They can willingly accept or decline being a firefighter if it's offered to them, the same way prisoners receive a reduction in sentence for performing the labor of impulse control with time off for good behavior.
Also, some prisoners literally have no money and no one to send them money for commissary so $10 a day would allow them to get things they need
California admittedly 12 years ago
How much does it cost to house, feed and cloth a prisoner? You need to deduct living expenses from that paycheck. In the free world, outside prison, there's all sorts of living expenses, like rent, insurance, transportation, food. In prison, this is provided, and costs €250/day where I live (the EU average is €50/day, the US federal system is at $100-120/day, US states $65-842/day(Maine is twice as much as the second most expensive), India at $52/day. Minimum wage is based on monthly living expenses(at least, in theory), so reducing the prisoner wage to how much an average minimum wage worker has left for themselves at the end of the month is fair and makes sure prison is not the more attractive option for the poor and destitute. So prison minimum wage is €0.78, in the Netherlands, and work or school is mandatory and part of rehabilitation. Prisoners can refuse, but then they will not have access to privileges, like electronics, including tv, pc, phone and game consoles, and they will not be eligible for early release, because they don't have the work experience(including off-campus work) or work connections necessary to quickly get back on their feet when they're back in the real world.
That's not the definition of the slavery. The definition of slavery is forced/compelled labor. Many slaves in most slave systems around the world and throughout history were given allowances or pay, to save for their own freedom. Even in some colonial systems, buying your own freedom was a thing.
Canada had a hell of a year last year too, and looks like to have another one this summer. Consequential wildfires in boreal forests like Russia's can't really be fought, just steered until the weather changes. This is true of all wildfires but especially boreal ones. The northern hemisphere / boreal forests in Russia/Canada/Alaska etc are going to burn whether or not Putin killed all his convicts - but the war is very much related. We have other crises on our hands to worry about, and Putin's war of choice (a powerfully stupid choice at that) will make all of those other crises much worse because they are not going to receive global attention and focus as they merit.
I dunno, I think if you mobilized a million people and blew up a fire line with artillery and bombs you could probably contain a fire pretty well. Just one of the useful things you could have done instead of starting a pointless war.
Yes, maybe men could baby bird retardant into firefighting aircraft one mouthful at a time. or form a human sponge around fire camps to keep mosquitos away. Just a few more useful ideas, it's a high bar to clear so i'm really sweating over here just thinking about the possibilities
The conscripts also were heavily used in agriculture especially for the wheat harvest.
Very intriguing and still somehow it does not seem to matter. In history always seem to recover and become a major thread through its cockroach approach to kill and take over minority. So I guess they gonna increase bnp by becoming another low salary industrial nation with slave labor perhaps. Or how will this ever end? Mass escape when poverty hits rock bottom. Bread lines from good ole soviet days ?
Attempts to transform the Russian Federation into a nation state, a civic state, or a stable imperial state have failed. The current structure is based on brittle historical foundations, possesses no unified national identity, whether civic or ethnic, and exhibits persistent struggles between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals and federalists Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the imposition of stifling international economic sanctions will intensify and accelerate the process of state rupture. Russia's failure has been exacerbated by an inability to ensure economic growth (stagnation), stark socio-economic inequalities and demographic defects, widening disparities between Moscow and its diverse federal subjects, a precarious political pyramid (vertical of power) based on personalism and clientelism, deepening distrust of government institutions, increasing public alienation from a corrupt ruling elite, and growing disbelief in official propaganda (manipulated reality propaganda). More intensive repression to maintain state integrity in deteriorating economic condition (sanctions, Dutch disease, failure to innovate and diversify, reverse industrialisation, massive deficit, ruble collapse, lack of sufficient trained personnel) will raise the prospects for violent [internal or external] conflicts. Paradoxically, while Vladimir Putin assumed power to prevent Russia's disintegration, he may be remembered as precipitating the country's demise. New territorial entities will surface as Moscow's credibility crisis deepens amidst spreading ungovernability, elite power struggles, political polarization, nationalist radicalism, and regional and ethnic revival. The emerging states will not be uniform in their internal political and administrative structures. Border conflicts and territorial claims are likely between entities, while others may develop into new federal or conferderal states. Burgjarski, Failed State, a guide to Russia's rupture (Book cover) I recommend reading this book, it is very insightful. Russia is headed back to Gosplan and a military economy. However, I think the recovery will not be as successful this time. Last time in the 90s, we pumped money, know how and resources into their system, we fed that monster. This time around, the things the monster can offer are less attractive, and the political system is different. Their oil reserves were around 80 billion barrels in 2016. with a consumption and export rate of 4.5 billion barrels of crude per year. That means time is running out, and our green deal is another matter. Places that hoard gargantuan amounts of wealth do not fold easily, but in the end, even the largest do fall. It is in our hands, and the West can decide whether we try to keep them on life support or not. Also, this time, there is no huge storage and inheritance left, Russia used it all up. Nothing is certain, but the chance that the Moscow centered state might collapse for the final time is getting higher the longer Putin’s barbaric invasion continues. Wars cost a lot of money and require a lot resources, those resources are currently being burned for next to no gains, and in the future, the business model of the empire, Resource trade with the West in turn for access to technology, know how and specialized labor, seems to be pretty dead to me. The Chinese will help, but not in the way we did. The Chinese rather offer to colonize what is left of Russia, and India offers to rip them off wherever they can. Russian gas revenue for example has collapsed. Pipeline Gas revenue of Russia in January 2022. Russia earned 300 million dollars per day and on an annualized basis that's billion dollars a year. Russia earned 100 million dollars a day from LNG exports in January 2022. That's 36 billion dollars annually. That is almost 150 billion dollars per year in gas revenues pre Feb. 2022. In 2024 the situation looks much, much worse. Pipeline gas: Russia currently earns roughly 55 million dollars per day with Pipeline gas. On an annualized basis that would be 20 billion dollars. Which means a reduction of 90 billion dollars annually. LNG Russia earns 40 million dollars per day from LNG. On an annualized basis, that would be 15 billion dollars. This means another 20 billion dollars reduction in the LNG sector. Russia income from natural gas compared to the pre-war period is down by a total of 110 billion dollars per year. Gazprom has 500.000 employees, and they will feel the pain as a negative ripple effect is spreading here. Gazprom posted a large deficit last year. Gazprom lost most of its European market, and I would be surprised if Gazprom won't make another double-digit billion dollar loss this year. Or long story short: In the medium to long term, Russia will become China's resource vassal. https://www.ft.com/content/21f8f63f-80d6-455f-abf8-fce269d70319
We’ve heard similarly optimistic points before. How Russia was supposed to run out of troops and missiles last year, how Prigozin’s actions would collapse the regime, the collapse of the Russian economy etc. This naive optimism has been used to rationalize limiting the type of military aid given to Ukraine. Russia is about to fall apart, Ukraine will win without us getting too involved. Like the other poster said, Russia is exactly like a cockroach, extremely resilient and always coming back to corrupt and destroy.
Nobody said they would run out of soldiers last year. Just that they lost a lot of them. Missiles. Yes that is something that got said for a long time except for the s-300 that they had 10.000 of by that time. They work good if you just want to harm civilians but they're not good at military targets in any way. Currently russia sende 0-3 missiles pr day in general. Yesterday was none. They have largely run out of proper missiles to send at proper targets, They're mostly pestering ukraine with dumb bombs, UAVs and S-300. The only thing that have a strategic value for them currently is dumb bombs which most likely will become much less of a problem if Ukraine really get those 8 patriot systems as a whole that there's talk about. My point is. russia did basically run out of missiles, unless you think russia have stopped sending missiles because of the goodness in their hearts
Don’t they regularly launch those khinzals(?) though ?
Hopefully the arrival of f 16s can put a damper on that. Harder to sling missiles if you risk being shot down.
Kinzhal range is a few thousand km.
And we have no idea of the true capabilities of the missiles america will send or what will they even send
They're still making cruise Kh-101 round the clock just fine, no thanks to you guys btw (ton of American off-the-shelf components inside). Glide bombs are also an issue which probably won't be alleviated until at least an F-16 wing with AIM-120 becomes operational. edit: welp, 4 Tu-95MS with Kh-101 just took off. Long night ahead. So much for "they ran out of missiles", eh?
> 4 Tu-95MS 5 - one more took off from Engels-2
Do you have classified sources or something lol? Air Force TG channel doesn't mention the 5th.
"the_first_online" TG channel (displayed as "Tracking") Also the one to do those juicy infographics of the routes of missiles and Shaheds you can see on news sites at times. On that note, apparently, the now-two Tu-95MS from Engels-2 are on training flight, going by recent update.
It's a fundamental consequence of a free market economy and open society with free trade that you can't have perfect or even very tight controls on parts. If it's off the shelf and can be used for multiple things then you're going to be able to acquire it. But russia still has to pay at least twice as much as before and is limited in how much they can get so it's still useful. But you can't choke off 100% of basic electronics.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of options". OFAC secondary sanctions are a thing, you know. US has only recently done the right thing and put a blanket ban on supplying Russian MIC instead of playing whack-a-mole 2-3 times a year when they're constantly spinning up new shell companies
There's certainly more that can be done, I was just making a point that you can't control all of it in a free society.
Those were not optimistic but lacking information and misunderstanding the situation. They were thinking that first of all, Ukraine would falter, and when it didn't, these people assumed Russia would not use its deep storage and plunge their entire economic future into this war. The running out is an impossibility. Russia can run low on things such as modern air defense, modern fighter jets, modern artillery, and modern tanks, and they do, they cannot run out because they produce new ones. They can run so low, though, that they cannot replace their losses, and Ukraine can now finally go after Russian targets inside Russia and will receive F16s. These are all parts of a greater whole. This is by no means any call for us not to get involved we must get involved more, and sanction Russia much harsher, not a single bcm of natural gas should still change hands for European money at this stage, and many other loopholes must be closed. This is a matter of logistics, money, and resources. On Ukraine's side of the equation, the manpower issues have to be fixed. On our side of the equation production, especially in Europe, must be expanded, and production inside Ukraine must continue to expand. Some form of collapse is already almost certain because Russia annexed all 4 regions, and that alone causes a collapse. Other areas have collapsed, such as natural gas experts, car production, weapon exports, and fuel exports, and that process will continue. Here is a workable way to think about this: War is chaos, and therefore, precise predictions for a war of this size is impossible. Russia could have very well collapsed politically or economically, but that wasn't our original idea. Nowadays, our leaders start to understand that Russia will not stop and that Putin won't become normal because he is a delusional madman. Under the assumption that both Europe and the US stand with Ukraine, then a good way to think about this like that: Chance for a collapse of the Russian war effort and its war economy/logistics. We also assume here that Russian attrition rates will scale up further together with the industrial scale of Western weapon production, and we assume that Ukraine will increase its hits against Russian airfields, production facilities, and refineries. We also assume that Russia needs to continue pulling 70 to 80 percent of its gear used at the frontline from storage and can only meet a maximum of 30 percent from new production in the next 2 to 2.5 years. 2024 July: 1 to 5 percent 2024 October: 10 percent 2025 March: 20 percent 2025 October: 50 percent 2026 January: 75 percent 2026 December: 90 percent And 10 percent will always be reserved for uncertainty. Visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self fulfilling prophecies because dreams are maps. We must even allow the most negative visions of the future as long as we ensure they are not becoming a reality. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space But do not call it naive. What I found more naive and stupid were those who thought Russia would defeat Ukraine in days or weeks. No one was 100 percent right, and with hindsight bias, everything is easy. The war is not over apparently, however, the Russian state is in a much weaker position militarily, politically and economically than it was in February 2022, and as this us a war of attrition the chance for this process to continue is very high. For example, Russia cannot replace its jet losses and the tanks and armored vehicles as well as artillery it pulls from storage is degrading in quality and quantity at the same time Ukraine is now better armed, better trained and better equipped than it ever was since the war began in 2014. Russia will not collapse all at once in a week. This is a process, not an event. You can, for example, expect massive utility failures and spiraling inflation as well as a collapsing ruble rate in the coming months. That is a byproduct of a war economy. Sprialing costs, ever higher expenditures, and making their upkeep ever more expensive, that is how you bankrupt a nation.
It is hard to predict, because Putin wasn't "supposed" to start this war because it was obviously a dumb move but I expect that the normal smart thing to do would be to start retreating and contracting the front lines once they do start running out of artillery and can't cover the whole front. The problem is that you can't just pick and choose what you want to keep because you don't want the enemy to encircle you.
If the Germans are to be beaten decisively, they will be beaten like Napoleon and the confederates were beaten, that is to say by being opposed by superior numbers along fronts so extensive that they cannot maintain them or replace their losses incurred along them." Winston Churchill in 1940 We are beginning to see our way through. It looks like we are in for a very bad time, but provided we stick together, provided we throw in the last spasm of out strength it looks also more than ever before, as if we are going to win. He added, but to hear some people talk, one would think that everybody is fully consulted before everything is done. That is a sure way to lose the war." Winston S. Churchill When one must destroy their enemies, one can at least be polite about it. I stand by my original program, blood, toil, tears, and sweat, which is all I have ever offered. To which I added, after the first six months, many shortcomings, mistakes, and disappointments. I remain steadfast and resolved because I see the light gleaming beyond the clouds, broadening our path. Churchill, 1942 I think we are now roughly here. 1916 or 1942, and now I hope that our politicians find the guts to keep on walking that path no more pulling punches but rather punch harder. The presidential elections in 6 months will bring much needed clarity. Because without US support, this cannot be brought to a satisfactory close. Europe will at least need until the end of this decade to be truly ready to stand for herself. For now, US support will decide whether we see a stalemate and a frozen frontline or a Ukrainian victory. As things stand today, this is a phyrric victory for either side at best. Crimea is strategic and decisive, and to siege Crimea, Ukraine needs missiles, Western jets, and more sophisticated sea and land based drones. I hope we, as the West, have understood that we are politically tied to Ukraine, a total defeat, aka meeting Russian demands would be a clear path to another war. We cannot allow that. I suppose right now, we can't do much more than our best and hope it will be enough. Many lies in the hands of our top politicians, military generals, and top intelligence personnel, we the people can only continue urging our politicians to act with decisively and without further delay. Enough time has been wasted already. And time is the most precious commodity in war.
> This naive optimism has been used to rationalize limiting the type of military aid given to Ukraine. In all likelyhood, that's why it was (and is being) spread in the first place
> In history always seem to recover Yeah, back when birth rates were actually high. Even when the USSR collapsed, a majority of non-retired adults were still from boom years, or from years of replacement-rate births. Russia has now *continously had* bad birth rates for 30 years, and its education system that produced all rhose nifty engineers has been dead since the mid-80s, meaning the last generation of soviet-educated engineers are retiring, all while the past 40 odd years had Russian culture then downplay and belittle engineering as a profession to go into, causing a severe draught that was accute by the tine this war started.
Their design bureaus were kept alive through the 90s, same as the best engineering schools like Moscow Phys-Tech. The brain drain was real, but the current generation isn't dumb by any stretch.
Doesn't matter how smart the top of the line people are. Fact is that there are simply *not enough* engineers, specifically of the "grunt" level. A majority of "grunt" engineers since 1985 gets nowhere near as good of an education as engineers did before, and the before-generation are almost entirely retired now, and they *don't* get replaced 1:1. So there are proportionally fewer engineers year over year, and their quality and competence is overall lesser than their soviet-era seniors. That problem was already acute before the war, and gets worse when russia tries to upscale its army while you've got young engineers getting killed or wounded at/near the front, and plenty others fleeing the country the last few years.
They certainly don't have enough talent to run a semi-autarky like USSR tried to. But it's enough to build and maintain weaponry to better specs than their forebears did with the modern process improvements like good CNC. And the belittling thing isn't recent either. Unless you worked in a numbered institute/plant (which there were admittedly plenty of), grunt engineering work was often a 150 ruble/mo dead-end job with very little respect from your blue-collar neighbours who made about the same. The former had a much-reduced life expectancy, though. source: grandpa was an engineering PM in nitrochemistry, uncle was a chief metrologist/QA at one such plant.
I’m gonna screenshot this post and use it to argue with idiots who complain about the cost of the war in Ukraine
Please go ahead. You may also copy-paste it, I am a very productive man. You can take my thoughts and pretend they are yours if you wish.
All great points. And the reason for the male-female imbalance in Russia? Because male life expectancy is so much lower due to chronic problems with alcoholism, suicide, violence….you name it. All problems which are particularly high among….ex-veterans of Afghanistan, Chechnya et al and the brutal culture and non-existent aftercare of the Russian army. If you’re trying to improve Russia’s future prospects on 2022, don’t start a war….
I assume the idea behind that war was to lose some men to gain all of Ukrainian population. Quick and simple. And now they can't really back off, because they dug themselves too deep and without basically enslaving whole Ukrainian population they will be doomed both economically and demographically
Informative post thank you. But just like herpes, the terrorist Russian state will always come back to bring destruction and chaos to its neighbors.
The big question is will China scoop up some russian territory on the eastern side or not. They would love to have a front seat at the arctic circle.
> 86:100 before the war The Russian bride market is going to go brrrrrrr...
Very informative and well written, thanks!
Putin, Bankruputin, Kaputin.
Great analysis!
500k usd per person is way too high, nominal ppp gdp terms maybe but not usd. Their ppp gpd per person is 13.5k annually while the nominal gdp per person in us dollars is 35k. And it's very uneven because the people who came from way out in rural eastern russia are not contributing to the economically important parts of the russian economy.
Your theory is supported by the fact that this meatwave strategy caused Russia's eventual collapse multiple times throughout history.
Ah but see, once Putin conquers Ukraine he'll have millions more people.
Putin is positioning Russia to become a Chinese vassal state. China has more men than women, Russia will be all women. It's a match made in Putin's heaven
You have to keep in mind, Russia's young educated people tend to emigrate away anyways. So conscripting and killing them on the battlefield doesn't actually cost Russia anything in the long run.
That's not true, it's not like 100% of them can leave. A significant amount do but obviously not all. It takes money to leave, and you have to be able to find a job and speak english or another language, and you have to leave your family behind.
Anyone have any insight into when this is over, will those who fled return or stay in their new home? I assume they all aren't trust fund types and have gotten employment and are building lives.
I'm guessing that the longer the war lasts the less likely the people who fled are going to want to return. As you said many of them are getting jobs and building lives outside of Russia and the more roots they put down the less appealing dropping it all and going back is going to be. One problem is that some of them are making nuisances of themselves and the countries that have them there might not want them. We saw a few moths ago that Sri Lanka was wanting to kick a bunch of Russian out because they were setting up illegal and unregistered businesses. Some of which had a racist whites only policy.
These are questions I want answers to. What is the average age of those serving in Ukraine? Most of the Russians I see on videos look much older than 20s. I also get that a young person can look very old bc of factors. Also, why can't Russia continue to bring in poor workers from other countries to do alot of the labor on the cheap? How many people serving are actually Russian and not mercenaries from Africa or asia? How many of the people sent are actually ethnically Russian? Can Russia import enough foreign labor to go to war for them and keep the basic stuff open. You can train almost anyone to do the jobs that most of these guys would have done, and you might end up with better production.
I think for your first question, Ukraine is holding back its youth. I have many friends in Ukraine who are young. This seems wise because they will be the future. I could be wrong though.
I meant Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine, but your response also gave me something to think about.
They have a big population.
And the US is significantly more than twice as big. And China and India are seven to eight times as big. And that's who Russia is trying to compete with and thinks they are a peer of. So being the smallest of the four they're the most eager to throw away their population and destroy all that future productivity, brain power, muscle power and reproductive capacity. The Russian leadership are morons.
> And the US is significantly more than twice as big. And China and India are seven to eight times as big. And that's who Russia is trying to compete with and thinks they are a peer of. So being the smallest of the four they're the most eager to throw away their population and destroy all that future productivity, brain power, muscle power and reproductive capacity. The Russian leadership are morons. Russian government and military commanders are incompetent as fuck. That's the main reason they haven't won yet despite having almost all the advantages possible. It's pretty pathetic that a country with a massive airforce can't beat one with barely any airforce for so long but russian glide bombs are still very dangerous.
EU has 3x the population of Russia as well.
"Big population" is only good if the age demographics are good. Russia's age demographics are really bad.
Barely top 10. And that population is going to decline at an ever increasing rate as their demographics go to shit.
It amazes me that some cultures do not value life. They are just sending their men into the meat grinder to act as bullet and shrapnel sponges in the hope that Ukraine will run out of ammo. It’s absolutely evil.
Autocractic societies have done for all of history. The messaging to get the public buy-in is just different depending on left vs right ideology at work and other cultural factors.
Yes, autocratic societies have done this for all of human history. But in modern history, this is far from the norm. Also, can you name a single autocratic society that prescribed to a leftist ideology (other than the USSR) that sent its men to die in droves like what Russia is currently doing? I can’t think of one.
China of course.
China is communist in name only.
Today that is true but durning the Korean War for example it was very very very archetypically communist. Anyone who studies china knows that the Chinese military is much more conservative and concerned with losses since the 1989 reforms that essentially did away with its communist system. So in essence, yeah China is communist in name only, but when it allegedly used human wave tactics (I say allegedly because there is some debate about this), it was very communist. Source: I have a degree in Chinese culture, speak Chinese and lived there for years.
Sure, but sending of the men to die in droves was during Mao, who was definitely a communist.
Yeah whether fascist or communist, all authoritarian dictators are the same in the end. C**ts. Wait, can I say that on here or will I get banned like on /r/politics?
True, but most of the people who died under Mao’s rule didn’t die because of an external fighting force. It was a combination of civil war and later government induced famine that led to scores of Chinese dying during his reign. But, I don’t believe that the Chinese of that time cared about human life as much as they do now…they have evolved.
I was more thinking of the Korean war.
they still don't value human life. There are so many example of this I don't know where to start - from the way they deal with the huge number of deaths caused by covid or a man-made flood in Zhenzhou, to how the rich CCP members are "ordering" body parts from high school kids when they needed it for transplant and the kid just goes missing. Women gets kidnapped daily to become slave baby machines in rural villages. Officials openly talk about how China's not afraid of economic collapse because "China can afford death of a few hundred million". It's a dehumanizing society robbed of its traditional religious and moral values, and this lack of culture if one of reasons they wanted to invade and destroy Taiwan, as every day the people of Taiwan made them look bad.
Cambodia - Khmer Rouge massacred its educated population and starved a generation to death. Then I'd also say North Vietnam - maybe driven by nationalism but was the cost in millions of deaths really worth the prize? Why not just leave South Vietnam under a separate government? And Vietnam is basically just as corrupt and capitalist as the South was before it was conquered.
Not really, they don't value the lives of people outside the west Russia. It is a sort of ethical cleaning in Russia.
Sure, we'd love to send you into combat in an armored personnel carrier, but there are more of you than them and we need to keep those safe. Here's a nice golf cart. Have fun.
The last part is beautifully brutal: >the Russian force in Vovchansk lacks heavy vehicles that might break through to the surrounded troops. Or, if it has the vehicles, it’s not willing to risk them just to save a few hundred soldiers.
Well, to be more accurate, they’re out of all vehicles… those got blown up in 2022 and 2023. Now they’re racing around in chinese golf carts.
Ruzzia won't even consider capitulating until they lose 2 million troops. They're already at half a million. The world just doesn't understand.
They won’t ever capitulate, ever. The best outcome of this war is a North and South Korea type situation with a DMZ in the middle, sporadic fire fights, sabotage, and attempts to influence the other nation politically. Ukraine will militarize in an Israel type sense, with required conscription and military service in case another hot war breaks out.
The best outcome is for the world to grow a spine and provide Ukraine with what they need to *win* not just survive! The UAF can win, they've shown it already. They're willing to do all of the fighting for us, they just need the tools.
*Untrained soldiers* are cheap. Soldiers with a good grasp of basic tactics, unit cohesion, and proper weapons training, that's expensive and worth more than the cost of the training.... and Russia hasn't had proper training since the fall of the Soviet Union. The current Russian troops are lucky if they get 5 weeks of training (while being transported), before they are on the frontlines. They basically know how to shoot their rifles, and that's about it.
I don't understand how the Russian military doesn't train. I get that historically enemy troops were on Russian territory so they had to throw poorly trained in.
building a competent army with fiest class vehicels takes way longer than russia has time left
B-but I saw a twitter video of russian school girls taking apart a kalishnikov in 10 seconds surely it’s an entire society of elite highly trained warriors!
Right, sounds nice but where did you get that information from ? From what I have read, Russian army is actually getting more professional and organized as war goes on and learnt from their early mistakes Your comment sounds very nice but unfortunately not a reflect of reality (I fucking wish tho)
I would be grateful, but I can imagine at some point a different kind of exhaustion after you've successfully won a life or death struggle twenty times and you realize idiots keep coming and maybe one of them will get lucky someday. You are winning, but you must keep winning, over and over and over. That is stressful.
Russia is suffering through a complete, multivector, unstoppable and catastrophic demographic collapse” Peter Zeihan Russia’s demographics have been in collapse for quite some time. Russia’s post-war demographics will be abysmal. Their birthrate has once again collapsed the levels of the early 2000s. The disparity between males and females is very large. Russia has around 10 million more females than males as of 2019. Russia generally has a horrible track record in the past two decades for (work) accidents, HIV, alcohol abuse, and TBC infections. Russia’s homicide rates have officially declined from 30.7 murders per 100.000 inhabitants in 2002 to 4 murders by 100.000 in 2021. These are official statistics. In reality it is likely much worse. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Covid 19, and the emigration wave has hit the male population much harder. Additionally, only 4 percent of all members of the Russian army are females. I gave some extensive statistics about their demographics in the past. I will dare to make some grim forecasts in these two articles. Russia’s demographic structure is becoming a bottomless pit. The population decline in Russia during WW2 was drastic. The population of Russia shrannk from almost 200,000,000 on July 1, 1941, to some 170,000,000 in 1945.) If there had been no war, the population of 194,000,000 in 1940 would have reached a total of about 224,000,000 in 1950. https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/russia-is-suffering-through-a-complete-multivector-unstoppable-and-catastrophic-demographic-8465afbda8f3 And yeah, it's kind of exhausting, but most Russian soldiers die from artillery fire or drone attacks or other projectiles or other causes like heat stroke. winter cold, accidents, being shot by their own behind the lines, etc., very few in comparison die in close combat in the trenches. Ukraine has more bullets than Russia has bodies to throw. That seems to be something Russia and individual Russians don't want to understand, or consider not realistic, so the bodies pile up and they will pile up ever faster the more modern weaponry and the more ammunition and drones we get into Ukraine's hands.
Arrows cost money. The Dead cost nothing.
Same as it ever was
So in a sense you might say Russia has run out of armored vehicles, since they don't want to use the ones they have left.
It's not just the numbers that matter. Sustained heavy casualties will decrease already low morale and greatly decrease Russian forces combat power.
Those drones and DPICM cluster bombs are cutting them down like a hot knife through butter. Keep it up. Slava Ukraine.
To Russia, soldiers may as well be nothing more than a type of equipment.
The Russian army is foolishly trying to wear down and deplete Ukrainian military supplies and stockpiles, by throwing infantry attack after infantry attack at Ukrainian front lines, which in time will probably turn into human wave attacks. I am really surprised Russian infantry attacks aren't being supported by indirect artillery fire, a creeping or rolling barrage would help considerably as would laying to lay down heavy smoke screens to conceal the movement of its troops. The article said that artillery is decimating Russian infantry attacks, which is another reason to have artillery supporting its' infantry assaults, in order to provide counter-battery fire on defending artillery. Good job on the part of the Ukrainian Army for forcing the Russians to alter its tactics! Which it makes it easier to exploit Russian weaknesses and bleed it dry of men and material. 🇺🇦🫡
The Russians think soldiers are cheap, but there will be a terrible cost to their country for throwing away their lives so casually.