Even Russians can do basic math. 750,000 men every year not entering the labor force. Not siring more babies. Not keeping Russian society running (for some value thereof.)
Russia is toast.
The toast will eventually burn, but it can take a long time.
It’s going to take several years before the Russian economy and society fell the pain.
After almost a full year of economic sanctions now, Russia hasn’t felt any serious effects yet.
It seems to me that Putin can keep fighting for a long,long,long time. While gradually destroying the electric grid in Ukraine till it’s unrepairable, and leaving scorched earth everywhere within range.
It seems to me that Ukraine will be toasted first.
And I pray that I;m wrong.
Not really. Even assuming these baby boys are still alive, still in Russia, and meet the country’s admittedly low military standards, Putin still has to think about who and where they are. Sending a bunch of Buryat from the hinterlands to their deaths is a different political calculation than sending Moscow’s sons.
Russia has ~30mil men in the 18-30ish range (which is more meaningful than how many are born annually) but, as noted, most are needed for economic reasons and Russia doesn’t have the supplies to equip and train 30 million anythings. It’s a number probably more meaningful for nation defense – having to push through/subjugate 30m people – than for offense. I can’t think of a modern war that needed to be called off because the aggressor literally ran out of male bodies to throw at it. Political and economic factors always come first.
This is not true, and Russian propaganda pushes this very idea.
This unprecedented economic coercion has not been able to obliterate the Kremlin’s resolve for war or its economic capability. Nor have the sanctions crushed Russia’s standard of living. But look closely, and you will see that they are succeeding in systematically crippling the country, and remain necessary in order to bring the war to an end.
Russia’s isolation now that its supply chains are decimated, along with the mass exodus of an estimated 1,000 foreign firms, threatens its future growth and power projection. By limiting Russian imports, export controls have created a trade surplus. High energy prices have also raised demand for rubles. As a result, the ruble has appreciated 29% against the dollar.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanctions-russian-economy/
Estimates from diverse sources show that the restrictive measures taken in Europe and elsewhere against Russia are working as expected, and the results are visible through economic indicators.
The Russian economy is shrinking
According to independent analysis by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2022 is a bad year for the Russian economy. By the end of 2022, Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to drop by at least 3.4% in the best-case scenario and by up to 4.5% in the worst-case scenario.
Russia’s economy will continue to shrink in 2023. Its GDP is forecast to decline by 2.3% year on year in the best-case scenario and by 5.6% in the worst-case scenario.
Except the missiles they’re using to destroy the electrical grid are exactly the sort of thing they can’t effectively produce more of. They’re burning through their existing stocks, and won’t be able to replace them effectively. When they’ve run out of long-range guided weapons, their ability to destroy things all over Ukraine will be gone, and won’t come back any time soon.
Sure, they can keep sending waves of men to be slaughtered, but that will only affect the border areas of Ukraine; the heart of the country will be safe. I’m personally far more concerned with the social and psychological effects of slaughtering thousands of poorly-equipped Russians on Ukrainian soldiers. That kind of killing wears on people, but they’ll have no choice but to keep it up until the Russians admit defeat.
Stairs!! Be careful out there people.
Okay, I understand all the people in Russia apparently taking weird falls, but France? And haven’t we see this before? Assuming it’s really Putin behind this, how is he still projecting power into other countries? Where are our security services in all this? Shouldn’t tracking down Russian defenestration teams be some kind of a priority?
Russian human intelligence* and ‘wetwork’ has always been pretty good going back to the Cold War and Putin has been pretty open about using it as a weapon against “traitors.” In fact that slang term derives from Russia. The list of people they have hit in even just the last couple of decades is fairly long and it is a little difficult to defend against short of locking yourself down in a sealed fortress. Something most people, even or perhaps especially rich oligarchs, are reluctant to do long-term.
- My understanding is during the Cold War and possibly even today the general rule of thumb was that the US were better at signals/electronic intelligence and the Russians were flat out better at human intelligence.
Ukrainian army units use Russian social media posts to precisely locate Russian units and have them destroyed:
Also:
Fragile morale among Russian force significant – UK MoD
Fragile morale almost certainly continues to be a significant vulnerability across much of the Russian force, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said in its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine.
In its daily briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD said soldiers’ concerns primarily focus on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives.
It said the establishment of two frontline “creative brigades” tasked with raising the morale of troops through providing entertainment and musical instruments among other things is “unlikely to substantively alleviate these concerns”.
Somehow both funny and sad.
Maybe they could get a comedic actor in there, too? I hear there’s a pretty good one in the area, and he’s really good at raising morale based on Russian casualty rates, poor leadership, etc.
smile
Russia’s population was already in decline before the war. That is going to be accelerated by war casualties as well as those who surrender or flee the country.
Putin literally cannot replace all the assets he’s burned through. NATO can. On a financial scale Russia is the size of South Korea and a great deal of it’s wealth is in oil and gas.
The only thing Putin has accomplished is to convince Europe not to buy his country’s fossil fuel at the expense of his own people. There’s no way he will survive this. It’s too big a screw up. He’s a dead man.
NATO members are significantly outspending Russia on munitions. The Russian economy should eventually begin to have problems supplying the invasion.
My concern is manufacturing new munitions. NATO has to replace what they’re sending to Ukraine. Where are the new defense contracts for manufacturers?
Guardian blog
OTOH, who’s going to attack NATO? Russia?
Not NATO, but the US may need to supply a lot of munitions to Taiwan in the case of a Chinese attack. I sincerely hope that the companies that make HIMARS and other weapons that we’ve supplied to Ukraine have their manufacturing lines ramped up to the max. But I also expect that info about that manufacturing is classified and not to be divulged on the internet, so I don’t bother to ask about it.
Interesting Guardian article. Thesis is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a serious knock-on effect on Russia’s reputation in the former Soviet republics, including downgrades in views of Russian culture:
We don’t actually need to replace most of the stuff we’re sending to Ukraine, because we have so much of it. And why do we have so much of it? Because we wanted to be able to destroy the entire Russian military. This stuff is all already fulfilling the reason for its existence.
My understanding is that it isn’t even our latest and greatest equipment, either. We’re just burning through our '90s stockpiles sort of like how the Russians are burning through their '50s stockpiles.
In any case, Himars supply is not something I’m concerned about. We sent Ukraine four at a time every month or two, starting with either four or eight as the first shipment. Probably a grand total still well under 30. I feel like we have the ability to replace a couple dozen himars pretty quickly.
The munitions, on the other hand, could be a concern.
In my post a little ways upthread, I was actually talking about both the weapons and the ammunition. I expect that HIMARS missiles are not that easy to manufacture, at least not compared with artillary shells. Ditto for other missiles like the anti-tank ones.