Ukraine Switching To A War Of Attrition Against Russia?
Two videos on increasing Russian logistics difficulties in the Russo-Ukrainian War. First up: A video that suggests Ukraine has switched from a territory recapture strategy to an attrition strategy.
“Russia is burning whether it’s oil terminals on the Baltic and the Black Sea, factories in far-flung Siberia, or military bases in Crimea, it seems almost every day something bursts into flames in Putin’s backyard. And Ukraine is thought to be the one behind it.” It’s an open question whether structure hits in places like Siberia are Ukrainian “werewolf” teams operating behind enemy lines, or native anti-Putin/anti-war (or even anti-Russian) partisans, but the effect seems the same: Russia now has to worry about attacks to its military, transport, energy, and manufacturing infrastructure far from the frontlines in Ukraine.
Zelensky warned Putin that if Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with indiscriminate missile attacks again, Ukraine would hit back. When it did, “Ukraine struck back a fire at the electrical substation outside Moscow, plunged three districts of the capital into darkness. Water pipes also burst, leaving people freezing in their homes. The plague of accidents soon spread to the cities of Omsk and Novosibirsk, deep in Siberia, which were left without heating as temperatures fell below -2.” Actually, Omsk and Novosibirsk aren’t “deep” in Siberia, because the place is so vast there another five time zones east of there.
“Soon after attacks began on critical infrastructure, including oil refineries upon which Putin’s economy relies. To date, three refineries have been blown up or set on fire, including two which were hit by long-range Ukrainian drones. One of those the Ust-Luga oil refinery near St. Petersburg, is almost 600 miles from Ukraine.”
“Railways and factories have also been blown up or burned down at the same time the Ukrainians have stepped up their campaign against Crimea.” Naval successes we’ve covered here already skipped.
At this point the video argues that Ukraine’s strategy was to liberate Ukrainian territory, no matter the strategic value. I don’t think that was the case.
Following the “failure” of the summer offensive (I would say “limited gains”), “Ukraine is digging in and refocusing liberation of territory is no longer the main goal hitting Russia where it hurts most.”
“Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them to fight with, and that’s where these drone missile and sabotage attacks come in.”
It then argues (as many others have) that Crimea is Putin’s main weakness, and that losing it will cripple his prestige and ability to stay in power and continue the war.
I think there has been a shift in Ukrainian strategy, but that shift has mainly been driven by the development and availability of longer-ranged weapons Ukraine lacked earlier in the war, combined with the effects of a long-term campaign to degrade Russia air power, naval assets and SAM systems, opening up avenues for longer range strikes. Ukraine focused on attacking Russia’s logistics systems right after the Battle of Kiev was won, but now they have the capability to hit much deeper into Russia’s logistics infrastructure.
Actually, I’m surprised there haven’t been any reported attacks on the Trans-Siberian Railway, given what a long, slender link that is. A few medium-to-long range drone teams inserted into northern Kazakhstan or Mongolia could wreck real havoc on trains, lines, bridges, etc.
Next, a video from Kanal 13 (very much a pro-Ukrainian source) suggests that the war and sanctions are cratering Russia’s military industrial complex.
“The Russian military industrial complex is being destroyed because of the war against Ukraine.”
Dimitri Fidive, CEO of the Muram Machine Building Plant, wrote in an email intercepted by the activists, that inflation and the shortcomings of Russia’s bureaucratic approach prevents plants that form the country’s military industrial complex from fulfilling government orders.”
“Plants are forced to sell their goods at prices set in 2019, but are at the same time expected to purchase details at market prices and in advance.”
“The money received from the government was not enough to cover the interest on the credit that his firm would need to take out to pay its suppliers.”
“Money is tied up until the completion of the government contracts, which normally last 3 to 5 years, meaning during this time the money is effectively frozen.”
“There is a shortage of staff at the plants due to both mass mobilization and a lack of accommodation [housing] in the area.”
Hell of a way to run a railroad. One wonders how extensive these problems are with other companies in Russia’s military industrial complex
Ukraine’s strategy has shifted more in relation to the way the war developed, and the changing availability of western weapons, than any fundamental shift in strategy. It became apparent that this was going to be a war of attrition in the first year, and the question of which would break first: The west’s willingness to send Ukraine weapons, or Russia’s economy and ability to wage it’s illegal war of territorial aggression?
Nothing about that strategy has changed, only Ukraine’s greater reach to affect the latter.
“Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them…”
While no one knows the breaking point of an enemy’s will, the material aspect of war are far less opaque. Historically, the country having greater material prosperity and an advanced industrial base triumphs over the less developed country.
Viet Nam demonstrated the futility of a superior industrial economy to defeat a primitive and backward one because the former’s will to persevere proved to be inadequate. However, the industrial component remained unquestioned.
Fast forward now to neo-Imperial Russia v the former colonial territory of Ukraine: the world’s Second Army invades the Second Poorest country in Europe. Given equal determination, the vastly greater material resources of Russia ought to have steamrolled Ukraine. Yet the outcome has been stalemate.
Instead of a stunning Russian blitzkreig, we are witness to a stultifying sitzkreig. What accounts for this?
Rampant ruble inflation has led to capital consumption in the Russian industrial base. This has led to a degradation of Russia’s military production. More significantly, the introduction of unmanned arial components, in which Ukraine enjoys an advantage, has enabled strikes against fixed elements in the enemy supply chain.
Oil is the lifeblood of mechanized warfare and cheap drones, capable of evading costly Russian air defenses have successfully struck at Saint Petersburg oil terminals. This massive storage complex is a fixed object being attacked by a maneuverable offensive force. It is akin to Guderian v the Maginot Line.
Cheap Unmanned Arial Vehicles have exposed the weakness of large, above ground industrial bases. This throws age-old assumptions out the window. The larger the industrial asset, the easier the target.
We are on the threshold of a new era in warfare. Russia’s sclerotic social hierarchy makes adaptation to the new realities problematic. Picture a large, lumbering dinosaur being attacked and eaten by a ravenous pack of small, nimble mammals.
“…Russia’s economy will grow by 2.6 percent in 2024.”
What part of the production possibilities curve is dedicated to butter and what proportion represents guns? Much of Russian GDP depends on vastly expanded military spending at the expense of consumer goods.
International comparisons lack rigorous validity because a 1% GDP increase in Japan represents primarily an increase in consumer goods whereas a 2% increase in Russian GDP represents increased military production. This output is then destroyed on the battlefield, leaving no return to its producers unless they can somehow salvage the scrap and recycle it.
By way of example, Zimbabwe’s GDP was 6.5% in 2022, slightly below 2021’s number of 8.5%. What does this prove? It was necessary to reach these stellar numbers by resorting to triple digit inflation. This is Winning(!)?
Only a damn fool believes anything coming out of Russia or China for statistics.
The loss rate Russia is experiencing has been unsustainable since about March of 2022. They just didn’t recognize that fact, and have continued to burn through the seed corn of former Soviet systems they had stored, and all their “trained” manpower.
What they’re doing right now is purely suicidal, in demographic and military terms. The problem is that the people making the decisions are all operating off of the lies they’re being told by frightened subordinates, all the way down the chain. This is going to do more damage to the Russian Federation than the Russo-Japanese War did to the Tsars, and it may soon approach WWI/Brusilov Offensive proportions. So far, they’ve expended an ungodly amount of armor and well over 350,000 men, with very little to show for it. Coupled with the failing infrastructure and the Ukrainian efforts to do even more damage?
I don’t see the Russian Federation coming out of this intact. It may take some time for the zombified system to collapse, but it is going to collapse. Anyone saying differently is whistling past the graveyard; much like all the Soviet triumphalists were back during the late 1980s. If you had the wit and wisdom to actually examine the facts, the impending collapse of the Soviet system was right out there in the open… Not the least of which was the disastrous Afghan campaign. Ukraine is making that look like a well-run and much more professional effort.
And, just as the Afghan idiocy led almost directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine fantasy is going to do the exact same thing.
The other thing going on here is the change in warfare. You see it in Ukraine; you see it in the Red Sea.
The fact is that the ground is shifting under the feet of the entrenched idiots running everything. The US military is just as bad, and other than being a bit better at things like field discipline and other low-level things, the US would be (and, is…) having similar difficulties with the change.
And, the change is tectonic in scale. Most of the old assumptions about everything need to be thrown out, and all the old guard really ought to be fired before they get a lot of soldiers and sailors killed.
Do note what the Ukrainians are doing to the Russians in the Black Sea. That’s gonna be us, in fairly short order. All those great big carriers and other things we’ve sunk so much cash into? LOL… Buh-bye. I don’t see anyone coming up with answers to those small drones, and the technology is only going to be getting better. Add in nukes? Which the Iranians are no doubt feverishly working on? Again, I laugh loudly.
The answer, as always, is going to be another ratchet in the dispersion and “power-down” of warfare. You can’t have great big honking boats, ‘cos they’re great big honking targets… So, what you need are lots and lots of little boats controlling lots and lots of drones. Same-same in the ground battle… You don’t need and probably can’t afford to operate the heavy armor formations of yore, and you do need lots and lots of drones and operators, as well as secure means of running those drones.
Or, AI for the drones in small enough packages that you can fit the stuff into the smaller ones.
In terms of “paradigm”, this isn’t just a simple recasting of assumptions; this is a total frame shift. Tomorrow’s wars are going to be fought by corporals whose teams are armed with weapons whose range and lethality are today the sole purview of company and battalion commanders.
I mean, think about it: Time was, your Forward Observer identified an enemy command post some kilometers behind the front-line trace, and that took going to the boss two levels up to get the firepower to hit the damn thing, because it would have taken a couple of batteries firing several salvos to really be sure you’d taken it out… Lots of resources tied up there.
Today, that command post is identified by the corporal’s drone operator, and the corporal makes the decision to either send one of their FPV drones in after the target, or he informs higher and they put a single MLRS rocket into the place, depending on the hardness of the target. I’ve seen video posted where they are flying FPV drones into buildings going after one or two guys who’re trying to hide…
The whole game has changed with this, and I don’t think people are quite grasping that fact, as of yet. About the only way I can see this ending in Russian victory would be for them to resort to nukes, and just blast their way across Ukraine, and I do not see that happening. Not even really that sure it would work, either… You’d about have to carpet the Ukrainian defense zones with enough nukes to kill every single drone operator, and given that most are pretty dug-in? Yeesh. And, what would be the point of doing all that, anyway? You’d turn the place into Chernobyl writ really, really big, so… Why?
The Russians did this to themselves, in the final analysis. There are lessons to be learned, for all concerned.
“Let’s see, Russian growth (.026 x 2,000,000,000,000) = $52,000,000,000.
U.S. growth (.021 x 30,000,000,000,000) = $630,000,000,000
So 12 times more.”
IMF and the World Bank also measure GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which is a better figure of merit when one country’s exchange rate is under international attack and you want to assess the actual goods and services boosts in two different countries
Russia’s 2024 PPP GDP is about $ 5.3 trillion. The U.S.’ PPP GDP is about $ 27.0 trillion (the PPP benchmark, which is our actual projected 2024 GDP). So about a 4.11 ratio by PPP, or about 1.75 ratio on a per capita PPP basis (142 million vs. 333 million people). This is dwarfed by the Gini coefficient disparity (inequality of wealth distribution), so the average Russian fares better from incremental economic growth than the average American.
This is another reason why Putin is not facing much unrest on the home front.
“[T]he average Russian fares better from incremental economic growth than the average American.”
This is because of diminishing marginal returns. The average Russian rejoices to get an additional vodka increment because he is operating at near-subsistence levels. The average American is happy to get an additional Scotch whisky increment but will suffer small loss if it doesn’t occur. He already has a goodly quantity.
Your example clearly demonstrates the absurdities inherent to international GDP comparisons. A 2.5% increase in a larger economy dwarfs a 5% gain in a less developed one. The numbers for Zimbabwe look good until you realize what they measure and how these numbers were generated.
No amount of hand waving or appeals to obscure econometric formulations can disguise this.
“[T]he Afghan idiocy led almost directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union,..”
I argue the proximate cause was the dismal showing of the vaunted Republican Guard in Iraq. The T-72 was no match for the M-1 Abrams tank.
The long shadow of a Soviet tank invasion via the Fulda Gap was shown to be an empty threat. The entire premise of the USSR was to be the economic and military colossus that would defeat the capitalists and liberate the world’s oppressed.
When it became abundantly clear that neither promise would be realized, the curtain fell on the entire wretched act.
“I argue the proximate cause was the dismal showing of the vaunted Republican Guard in Iraq. The T-72 was no match for the M-1 Abrams tank.”
I have to disagree with you. The average Soviet citizen had no idea what was going on in Iraq, and didn’t care. No connection with them, see?
However, comma? When Sasha didn’t come home, and Yuri returned in a zinc box? That, they knew about, and the fact that the lies of the government about the whole thing were shown to be lies? That made a hell of a statement, along with the actual situation on the micro-economic level.
Iraq didn’t result in dead Russians, so the average citizen of the future Russian Federation simply did not know or care, which was the exact opposite case in the Afghan situation. As well, there was also the eye-witness testimony of the Afghantsi to tell them how they were getting killed for no reason.
Ukraine is an exponentially larger thing, in terms of losses. Of course, given that the average Russian Federation citizen believes the bullshit about how Ukraine is an intrinsic part of Russia, it’s going to take a lot more for them to decide that they’re being gaslit, and that it isn’t worth it.
My wife and I took a Viking River Cruise in Russia back in 2015. (We had a really good time, and always wanted to go and do it again, but that will never happen now.) Anyway, about halfway through the cruise, we stopped in a small town out in the forest somewhere (I forget the name now.) Part of the stop involved going into the small town to see the local people and have a program in the local high school. There were some female students singing and dressed up in traditional costumes, crafts made by students that they were selling, and a tour of the school. It was all fun and pretty lighthearted. Anyway, as we toured the school, we noticed the hallways were lined with black and white photos of young men. One of the fellows in the group asked the tour guide what the pictures were there for. The tour guide said that the pictures were of the students who had been killed in Afghanistan.
That has stuck with me ever since. First, here we are in a nowhere town 500 miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The people there had absolutely no say in how the country was run. But their young men were sent to Afghanistan to fight and die. The second thing that stuck with me was that they had commemorated the students in their hallways. You would never see anything like that in an American high school. I think about that every time I read one of these articles about the war. What an absolute waste of human life it is – for no point at all.
GDP is a questionable metric for economic activity, since money printer go *brr!* = GDP number go up. Few people argue that rapid inflation is a sign of prosperity… except for when they do it by implying government spending counts the same as industrial output.
Afghanistan did not result in too many dead Russians, though. 15,000 fatalities over the course of a decade is small potatoes for a Russian war effort.
They have lost 5-6x that number in a single afternoon.
Losing prestige from the annihilation of your main battle tank, now that a ruinous outcome.
I find this to be a WILDLY optimistic take. Other, more sober analysts, who have no love for Russia or Putin, who have more dire takes — that Ukraine is losing, doesn’t have enough weaponry or troops — seems to me to be more on the mark. I hope I’m wrong but you saying that the Ukraine counteroffensive had “limited success” as opposed to being the outright failure that it was (it lost almost all of its best, US-trained troops) seems to argue that you’re trying to be more optimistic than actual facts dictate. Like I said, I hope I’m wrong.
“Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them…”
While no one knows the breaking point of an enemy’s will, the material aspect of war are far less opaque. Historically, the country having greater material prosperity and an advanced industrial base triumphs over the less developed country.
Viet Nam demonstrated the futility of a superior industrial economy to defeat a primitive and backward one because the former’s will to persevere proved to be inadequate. However, the industrial component remained unquestioned.
Fast forward now to neo-Imperial Russia v the former colonial territory of Ukraine: the world’s Second Army invades the Second Poorest country in Europe. Given equal determination, the vastly greater material resources of Russia ought to have steamrolled Ukraine. Yet the outcome has been stalemate.
Instead of a stunning Russian blitzkreig, we are witness to a stultifying sitzkreig. What accounts for this?
Rampant ruble inflation has led to capital consumption in the Russian industrial base. This has led to a degradation of Russia’s military production. More significantly, the introduction of unmanned arial components, in which Ukraine enjoys an advantage, has enabled strikes against fixed elements in the enemy supply chain.
Oil is the lifeblood of mechanized warfare and cheap drones, capable of evading costly Russian air defenses have successfully struck at Saint Petersburg oil terminals. This massive storage complex is a fixed object being attacked by a maneuverable offensive force. It is akin to Guderian v the Maginot Line.
Cheap Unmanned Arial Vehicles have exposed the weakness of large, above ground industrial bases. This throws age-old assumptions out the window. The larger the industrial asset, the easier the target.
We are on the threshold of a new era in warfare. Russia’s sclerotic social hierarchy makes adaptation to the new realities problematic. Picture a large, lumbering dinosaur being attacked and eaten by a ravenous pack of small, nimble mammals.
The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released on Tuesday, said that Russia’s economy will grow by 2.6 percent in 2024:
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS
The IMF expects the U.S. economy will grow by only 2.1 percent this year:
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/USA
“…Russia’s economy will grow by 2.6 percent in 2024.”
What part of the production possibilities curve is dedicated to butter and what proportion represents guns? Much of Russian GDP depends on vastly expanded military spending at the expense of consumer goods.
International comparisons lack rigorous validity because a 1% GDP increase in Japan represents primarily an increase in consumer goods whereas a 2% increase in Russian GDP represents increased military production. This output is then destroyed on the battlefield, leaving no return to its producers unless they can somehow salvage the scrap and recycle it.
By way of example, Zimbabwe’s GDP was 6.5% in 2022, slightly below 2021’s number of 8.5%. What does this prove? It was necessary to reach these stellar numbers by resorting to triple digit inflation. This is Winning(!)?
Only a damn fool believes anything coming out of Russia or China for statistics.
The loss rate Russia is experiencing has been unsustainable since about March of 2022. They just didn’t recognize that fact, and have continued to burn through the seed corn of former Soviet systems they had stored, and all their “trained” manpower.
What they’re doing right now is purely suicidal, in demographic and military terms. The problem is that the people making the decisions are all operating off of the lies they’re being told by frightened subordinates, all the way down the chain. This is going to do more damage to the Russian Federation than the Russo-Japanese War did to the Tsars, and it may soon approach WWI/Brusilov Offensive proportions. So far, they’ve expended an ungodly amount of armor and well over 350,000 men, with very little to show for it. Coupled with the failing infrastructure and the Ukrainian efforts to do even more damage?
I don’t see the Russian Federation coming out of this intact. It may take some time for the zombified system to collapse, but it is going to collapse. Anyone saying differently is whistling past the graveyard; much like all the Soviet triumphalists were back during the late 1980s. If you had the wit and wisdom to actually examine the facts, the impending collapse of the Soviet system was right out there in the open… Not the least of which was the disastrous Afghan campaign. Ukraine is making that look like a well-run and much more professional effort.
And, just as the Afghan idiocy led almost directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine fantasy is going to do the exact same thing.
Let’s see, Russian growth (.026 x 2,000,000,000,000) = $52,000,000,000.
U.S. growth (.021 x 30,000,000,000,000) = $630,000,000,000
So 12 times more.
The other thing going on here is the change in warfare. You see it in Ukraine; you see it in the Red Sea.
The fact is that the ground is shifting under the feet of the entrenched idiots running everything. The US military is just as bad, and other than being a bit better at things like field discipline and other low-level things, the US would be (and, is…) having similar difficulties with the change.
And, the change is tectonic in scale. Most of the old assumptions about everything need to be thrown out, and all the old guard really ought to be fired before they get a lot of soldiers and sailors killed.
Do note what the Ukrainians are doing to the Russians in the Black Sea. That’s gonna be us, in fairly short order. All those great big carriers and other things we’ve sunk so much cash into? LOL… Buh-bye. I don’t see anyone coming up with answers to those small drones, and the technology is only going to be getting better. Add in nukes? Which the Iranians are no doubt feverishly working on? Again, I laugh loudly.
The answer, as always, is going to be another ratchet in the dispersion and “power-down” of warfare. You can’t have great big honking boats, ‘cos they’re great big honking targets… So, what you need are lots and lots of little boats controlling lots and lots of drones. Same-same in the ground battle… You don’t need and probably can’t afford to operate the heavy armor formations of yore, and you do need lots and lots of drones and operators, as well as secure means of running those drones.
Or, AI for the drones in small enough packages that you can fit the stuff into the smaller ones.
In terms of “paradigm”, this isn’t just a simple recasting of assumptions; this is a total frame shift. Tomorrow’s wars are going to be fought by corporals whose teams are armed with weapons whose range and lethality are today the sole purview of company and battalion commanders.
I mean, think about it: Time was, your Forward Observer identified an enemy command post some kilometers behind the front-line trace, and that took going to the boss two levels up to get the firepower to hit the damn thing, because it would have taken a couple of batteries firing several salvos to really be sure you’d taken it out… Lots of resources tied up there.
Today, that command post is identified by the corporal’s drone operator, and the corporal makes the decision to either send one of their FPV drones in after the target, or he informs higher and they put a single MLRS rocket into the place, depending on the hardness of the target. I’ve seen video posted where they are flying FPV drones into buildings going after one or two guys who’re trying to hide…
The whole game has changed with this, and I don’t think people are quite grasping that fact, as of yet. About the only way I can see this ending in Russian victory would be for them to resort to nukes, and just blast their way across Ukraine, and I do not see that happening. Not even really that sure it would work, either… You’d about have to carpet the Ukrainian defense zones with enough nukes to kill every single drone operator, and given that most are pretty dug-in? Yeesh. And, what would be the point of doing all that, anyway? You’d turn the place into Chernobyl writ really, really big, so… Why?
The Russians did this to themselves, in the final analysis. There are lessons to be learned, for all concerned.
“Let’s see, Russian growth (.026 x 2,000,000,000,000) = $52,000,000,000.
U.S. growth (.021 x 30,000,000,000,000) = $630,000,000,000
So 12 times more.”
IMF and the World Bank also measure GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which is a better figure of merit when one country’s exchange rate is under international attack and you want to assess the actual goods and services boosts in two different countries
Russia’s 2024 PPP GDP is about $ 5.3 trillion. The U.S.’ PPP GDP is about $ 27.0 trillion (the PPP benchmark, which is our actual projected 2024 GDP). So about a 4.11 ratio by PPP, or about 1.75 ratio on a per capita PPP basis (142 million vs. 333 million people). This is dwarfed by the Gini coefficient disparity (inequality of wealth distribution), so the average Russian fares better from incremental economic growth than the average American.
This is another reason why Putin is not facing much unrest on the home front.
“[T]he average Russian fares better from incremental economic growth than the average American.”
This is because of diminishing marginal returns. The average Russian rejoices to get an additional vodka increment because he is operating at near-subsistence levels. The average American is happy to get an additional Scotch whisky increment but will suffer small loss if it doesn’t occur. He already has a goodly quantity.
@Icepilot
Your example clearly demonstrates the absurdities inherent to international GDP comparisons. A 2.5% increase in a larger economy dwarfs a 5% gain in a less developed one. The numbers for Zimbabwe look good until you realize what they measure and how these numbers were generated.
No amount of hand waving or appeals to obscure econometric formulations can disguise this.
“[T]he Afghan idiocy led almost directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union,..”
I argue the proximate cause was the dismal showing of the vaunted Republican Guard in Iraq. The T-72 was no match for the M-1 Abrams tank.
The long shadow of a Soviet tank invasion via the Fulda Gap was shown to be an empty threat. The entire premise of the USSR was to be the economic and military colossus that would defeat the capitalists and liberate the world’s oppressed.
When it became abundantly clear that neither promise would be realized, the curtain fell on the entire wretched act.
Golf clap. Well done.
Malthus said:
“I argue the proximate cause was the dismal showing of the vaunted Republican Guard in Iraq. The T-72 was no match for the M-1 Abrams tank.”
I have to disagree with you. The average Soviet citizen had no idea what was going on in Iraq, and didn’t care. No connection with them, see?
However, comma? When Sasha didn’t come home, and Yuri returned in a zinc box? That, they knew about, and the fact that the lies of the government about the whole thing were shown to be lies? That made a hell of a statement, along with the actual situation on the micro-economic level.
Iraq didn’t result in dead Russians, so the average citizen of the future Russian Federation simply did not know or care, which was the exact opposite case in the Afghan situation. As well, there was also the eye-witness testimony of the Afghantsi to tell them how they were getting killed for no reason.
Ukraine is an exponentially larger thing, in terms of losses. Of course, given that the average Russian Federation citizen believes the bullshit about how Ukraine is an intrinsic part of Russia, it’s going to take a lot more for them to decide that they’re being gaslit, and that it isn’t worth it.
My wife and I took a Viking River Cruise in Russia back in 2015. (We had a really good time, and always wanted to go and do it again, but that will never happen now.) Anyway, about halfway through the cruise, we stopped in a small town out in the forest somewhere (I forget the name now.) Part of the stop involved going into the small town to see the local people and have a program in the local high school. There were some female students singing and dressed up in traditional costumes, crafts made by students that they were selling, and a tour of the school. It was all fun and pretty lighthearted. Anyway, as we toured the school, we noticed the hallways were lined with black and white photos of young men. One of the fellows in the group asked the tour guide what the pictures were there for. The tour guide said that the pictures were of the students who had been killed in Afghanistan.
That has stuck with me ever since. First, here we are in a nowhere town 500 miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The people there had absolutely no say in how the country was run. But their young men were sent to Afghanistan to fight and die. The second thing that stuck with me was that they had commemorated the students in their hallways. You would never see anything like that in an American high school. I think about that every time I read one of these articles about the war. What an absolute waste of human life it is – for no point at all.
GDP is a questionable metric for economic activity, since money printer go *brr!* = GDP number go up. Few people argue that rapid inflation is a sign of prosperity… except for when they do it by implying government spending counts the same as industrial output.
“Iraq didn’t result in dead Russians,..”
Afghanistan did not result in too many dead Russians, though. 15,000 fatalities over the course of a decade is small potatoes for a Russian war effort.
They have lost 5-6x that number in a single afternoon.
Losing prestige from the annihilation of your main battle tank, now that a ruinous outcome.
I find this to be a WILDLY optimistic take. Other, more sober analysts, who have no love for Russia or Putin, who have more dire takes — that Ukraine is losing, doesn’t have enough weaponry or troops — seems to me to be more on the mark. I hope I’m wrong but you saying that the Ukraine counteroffensive had “limited success” as opposed to being the outright failure that it was (it lost almost all of its best, US-trained troops) seems to argue that you’re trying to be more optimistic than actual facts dictate. Like I said, I hope I’m wrong.