Several people have wargamed possible outcomes to the Russo-Ukrainian War, but probably few have so literally gamified it.
His argument is pretty simple: Russia has X-industrial capacity, it’s using up Y amounts of war material, broken down into rough categories of how much Z time it takes to replace said war material. As this material is used up faster than it can be replaced, a scale estimates the chances of the Russian lines collapsing due to lack of material to carry on the fight, which runs from 10% in June to 100% on December 26, 2026.
There is a certain rough and ready logic to this analysis, and Russia is using up its stockpiles of Soviet-era equipment at an unsustainable rate, especially when it comes to aircraft. But there are numerous problems with this gamified analysis:
This is an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction. The map is not the territory, and the Russo-Ukrainian War is not a game of Strategic Conquest where any city’s productive capacity can be set to any task.
It’s not a question of how much generic productive capacity, it’s how much steel, gas, titanium, precision machinery, semiconductors, etc., Russia can produce.
By assuming Europe will keep Ukraine well supplied with war material, the YouTuber (Mark Biernat, “a Ph.D. student in Poland and teach college economics in the US”) is making assumptions that may not be warranted, especially when it comes to manpower, which may be a serious constraint on Ukraine.
It also assume that Russia won’t change it’s wasteful, grinding assault tactics to conserve men and material. Maybe not a bad bet, given their continued stupidity, but not a sure thing.
The author has not covered the general state of the Russian economy here, but he seems to have gone into that in other videos. The problem is that YouTubers have correctly predicted 10,000 of the last zero Russian economic collapses, so I’m getting a little jaded on this front. Russia’s economy is clearly in trouble, but large economies can stay in trouble for quite a long time before collapsing.
I am broadly sympathetic to the author’s thesis and worldview, but this argument is too abstracted from reality for me to assign any veracity to the estimation dates for possible collapse.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 30th, 2024 at 6:09 PM and is filed under Economics, Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Peter Zeihan talks so dang much about Russia ceasing to exist as a unified country in a few decades – especially after so many young men have been killed in battle. I’ve heard it so much, I wonder: okay, so what does that look like, exactly?
… does it turn into a lot of little countries, with shifting alliances to each other either fighting or cooperating?
… does China move north to take some of Siberia and the Pacific coast?
… as the Arctic warms, do trade (and military) routes open up changing the game for everybody involved?
… do other powers move in and try their hand?
It’s taken me a long time to figure out what Russia’s afraid of. I think I have some idea now.
PZ speaks of their desire to maintain an outer boundary at the various gaps in their perimeter. Chechnya, Georgia, and other skirmishes being a matter of plugging in these gaps. Ukraine being on the way to two of these gaps, therefore even if they win in Ukraine they’re not “done”.
I’ve always wondered … why? USA isn’t interested. I see no world in which we want to attack Russia. So if not us, then the world should be at peace, right? The USA is even retreating from the world, so all the less reason to fear us, right?
Oh. Wait. The USA is retreating from the world. That also means … we’re no longer keeping the other dogs on a leash.
Finally a few months ago heard more about Polish history. How they once conquered Moscow. How the arguments Putin made to Tucker about land claims in Ukraine could go the other direction.
… and how Poland buys every weapons system USA sells, even weapons systems that are still in development and not ready to sell. “Little European Texas” as HLC likes to call them.
“YouTuber (Mark Biernat, “a Ph.D. student in Poland and teach college economics in the US”) is making assumptions that may not be warranted.”
I disagree with your analysis. I get all my military assumptions from Polish youtubers teaching economics in the US. Russia’s catastrophic collapse – any day now – is virtually boiled into the pierogis at this point, especially after Putins recent funeral.
I’ll just observe that there’s apparently a lot of “fail” in a former superpower-by-courtesy.
In terms of things I have some personal knowledge of, I can say that the Russian military efforts in Ukraine are indicative of sheer ‘effing insanity. The current trend of “motorcycle assault troops” running up against prepared Ukrainian positions is indicative of several things, none of which bode well for the rest of Russia.
One, the fact that they’re resorting to such expedients indicates that they’re either out of old Soviet armor that runs to use in these “meat assaults”, or two… And, potentially even worse, they’re acknowledging that their same-old, same-old “system of war” is now essentially overcome by reality.
You don’t send hundreds of men, expensively acquired, off on unarmored motorcycles through terrain you know is observed, on the off chance that you might get a few of them into the enemy defenses… To do what, precisely? This indicates a desperation and a bankruptcy of leadership. They’re literally throwing men up against the wall to see what sticks…
Where are the BMPs? Where are the BTRs?
If you had told me that they’d be reduced to this, and still trying to make a fight of it? I’d have told you that you were insane, and that nobody in the modern era is that f*cking dumb. I was wrong, and I’ll freely admit that fact: The Russians really are that dumb. They’re approaching the Brusilov point with a rapidity that leaves me incredulous.
If they go past it, well… New standards have been set for egregious stupidity at making war.
The really mind-boggling thing is sitting at a computer, and watching clip after clip of these failed mini-assaults hitting the Ukrainian lines like bugs hitting a windshield. The Russians are trading lives for military competence, and the Lanchester Square Law has got to start hitting soon. I think the entire system is going to come crashing down in some unpredictable way; there might be a trainload of troops that just lose their shit and then the preference cascade will happen. I thought it had begun with Pregozhin, but it didn’t. It’s even worse now, with the Russian Army’s “good” generals going on show trial: Where does that end, pray tell?
We’re all just sitting here watching the show, in awe of the fact that the ringmaster has all his bears still riding around him obediently on their little unicycles. At some point, the bears are gonna wise up, realize that there is nothing between them and that asshole with the whip, and it’s gonna be post-Brusilov Offensive, 2nd iteration.
The Tsar was in large and in charge, right up there until the point he wasn’t. The collapse of Imperial Russia took many by surprise, ‘cos they were so sure that as things had been, so they would remain.
I can’t see how this can last, and I’m amazed that it’s managed to go on for so long. There’s the fallacy of sunk costs here, and they’ve created a massive case study for historians, here. What the hell can they get out of Ukraine that would even be worth this amount of money and lives?
I wonder how this “monetary economist “ calculates the attrition costs. Russia’s best tanks were tasked with the invasion. When the tank column stalled outside Kiev, it was preyed upon by Javelin missiles.
After losing battle-ready tanks in the first wave, Russia turned to reserve materials. The reserve tanks were deficient in ways that the mainline tanks were not. So there is no generic tank model that can be used to calculate the readiness of Battalion Tactical Groups.
In addition, junior commanders suffered disproportionately in the early stages of the invasion and cohesiveness has deteriorated. In short, material and morale are qualitatively different than they were in February of 2022.
An economist can tell you the costs of war but cannot extrapolate from those numbers to say when the invasion will fail. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong but TIME and CHANCE happens to all.
Russian adventurism has cost the regime men, material and morale. It looks like they have exhausted their combat power but even a mortally wounded enemy can continue to fight until his brain is completely exhausted iof oxygenated blood.
Michael Lee Platt managed to kill and wound several FBI agents in the Miami shootout even after receiving a mortal wound to his heart. The fight isn’t over until the bad guy can’t return fire. From a logistic standpoint, this is difficult to forecast.
Prighozian demonstrated Russia’s susceptibility to an internal uprising. I see this war ending when a successful military revolt against the FSB occurs. This will happen somewhat independently of front line considerations.
[…] in four years, and Biden opens the gate to the Cuban Communist Party’s Trojan horse BattleSwarm: Wargaming Russia’s Collapse Behind The Black: Launches by Red China and Russia, A second Indian rocket startup completes […]
Tangential to the posted video, but it’s worth noting that the Poles aren’t restricting themselves to buying from Uncle Sam. Of particular note is that they’re buying/building a tank factory from Seoul; the tank in question isn’t believed to be quite up to par with a current model M1 or Leopard II, but it’s pretty good, with the hope that the Poles won’t need Korean help for its replacement.
Plus, the Koreans don’t demand the export controls the Americans and Germans do.
Moot point if the plant doesn’t get finished, of course.
bne IntelliNews analyzed Russia’s 2023 regional tax and banking statistics. This provides a clearer picture of the Russian military-industrial complex (OPK) performance than this video.
bne analysts show considerable rotation within the Russian economy, but no evidence of impending collapse. The Russian OPK appear to be outproducing the needs of the Russian forces in many categories of munitions and their Ministry of Defense has elected to warehouse the surpluses for future conflicts rather than curtail production:
“The Russian federal budget posted revenue growth of 50% year on year to RUB11.7 trillion ($128bn) in 4M24, achieving revenue growth rate of 41% y/y in April 2024 alone, according to the preliminary data from the Finance Ministry and calculations of RBC business portal. (chart)
Spending was up by 21.5% y/y to RUB13.2 trillion in 4M24, up by 25% y/y in April alone, making a deficit of RUB1.48 trillion in 4M24. Despite halving y/y from RUB3 trillion seen in the same period of 2023, the deficit came close to the full-year target of RUB1.59 trillion as early as end of April…..”
All of this has dramatically elevated Putin’s popularity within Russia:
“The war in Ukraine has put money in working class pockets and the amount has increased noticeably in the last year. People are going shopping, fuelling a feel-good consumption boom. And that is lifting support for Putin. Four out of five Russians now say they trust Putin and the last Levada Centre poll shows that Putin’s popularity has risen since the war started and currently stands at 86%, with only 11% disapproving….”
“PZ speaks of their desire to maintain an outer boundary at the various gaps in their perimeter. Chechnya, Georgia, and other skirmishes being a matter of plugging in these gaps. Ukraine being on the way to two of these gaps, therefore even if they win in Ukraine they’re not “done”.
I’ve always wondered … why? USA isn’t interested. I see no world in which we want to attack Russia. So if not us, then the world should be at peace, right? The USA is even retreating from the world, so all the less reason to fear us, right?”
I think they are still fighting The Great Patriotic War (WWII to us) and see a real need to have everything from the Russian Border to the German border as a buffer. I believe the reunification of Germany wakened old ghosts in the Kremlin and Putin really wants to recreate a version of the Warsaw Pact of puppets to his west to keep Europe and it’s influences at bay.
“Oh. Wait. The USA is retreating from the world. That also means … we’re no longer keeping the other dogs on a leash.”
And that is the other part of the equation. A retreating USA emboldens people like Putin and the Ayatollahs.
The US wouldn’t attack Russia mainland, just help resist Russia’s incursions over agreed-upon borders.
China is the real threat for acquisitions, especially east of the Urals.
“The US wouldn’t attack Russia mainland, just help resist Russia’s incursions over agreed-upon borders.
China is the real threat for acquisitions, especially east of the Urals.”
The fact that Putin identified NATO and the US as his primary adversary speaks volumes as to his competence and general grasp on reality.
Had he simply left everything the hell alone, NATO would have been moribund and dead well within a generation; absent his actions in Ukraine, NATO probably would have dissolved no later than about 2050.
Instead, he’s pissed away most of his legacy gear, an entire generation of young men, and for what?
He’s either insanely delusional, or he’s being played by Chinese influencers in his government. My money is actually on Shoigu being a long-term Chinese sleeper agent or at least, acting in China’s interests. Nothing else really makes sense…
The minute Putin took his eye off the Russian Far East, he basically doomed Russia as even existing, let alone remaining a “power” of any kind. The destruction of his military potential in Ukraine is insane folly that will come back to haunt Russia in decades to come…
Who remembers the game Strategic Conquest? It was awesome!
It was one of the first network games where you could play against other players on your network.
Sadly, it went away.
He has one really good point: imagine if Russia were a peaceful country. What a difference it would make to the global landscape.
Putin is a scourge upon this Earth.
“‘The war in Ukraine has put money in working class pockets and the amount has increased noticeably in the last year. People are going shopping, fuelling a feel-good consumption boom.”
Maybe they are celebrating the butchery of Bucha but they should repent in sackcloth and ashes instead.
The Lord, the Lord Almighty,
called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
But see, there is joy and revelry,
slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
“for tomorrow we die!”—Isaiah 22:12,13
“He has one really good point: imagine if Russia were a peaceful country. What a difference it would make to the global landscape.
Putin is a scourge upon this Earth.”
This is how you say that you have never studied actual Russian history at all, or that you only read Russian apologia instead of honest history.
Russia has always been a blight upon the world, going back to the time of the Golden Horde. They were Quislings to the Mongols, made their money as collectors for them, and destroyed all their neighbors. It really got going when Ivan the Terrible destroyed Novgorod, and you can see the effects down to this day in the thousands of abandoned and ruined settlements in what was once the most prosperous part of European Russia.
All of Russia’s “Empire” was built on exactly what they’re trying to do in Ukraine, today. Same techniques, same depravity. They’ve operated like this for centuries, under many different masters. It’s the Russian way; that’s why they earned the sobriquet of “the penitentiary of nations” back during the Tsar’s time.
Putin’s Russia is merely behaving exactly as its internal logic and imperatives mandate; if they cease to expand by rapine, pillage, and plunder? Like a shark that stops swimming, they’ll asphyxiate.
Any fool that supports Russia supports war crimes and imperialism. You ever note how often they claimed the West that opposed them during the Cold War were “imperialists”? Yeah; purest projection, because that’s precisely what the Russians are: The last extant quasi-European empire.
The day the whole thing collapses, and the last Russian dies out with their horrible literature…? That will be a signal day for the human race. They’ve never contributed anything but ruination and slaughter, many times through their national pastime of subversion and espionage. Don’t forget that the proximate cause for WWI, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, was carried out with “guidance” from Russian operatives working inside Serbia… And, that the “reformist” Alexander II who was assassinated by the Russian anarchists that shortly spread their nihilistic poison to the rest of the world…? That was the one guy in the last couple of centuries that tried reforming the place. Didn’t work out so well, obviously.
If you have read the unsanitized version of Russian history, and still possess an iota of sympathy for the nation or the people, you’re almost certainly not right in the head. They’ve enabled every one of the nasty bastards leading them, from Ivan the Terrible on down to Lenin and Stalin; they took great joy in starving the peasantry to death, in order to steal their grain and sell it to buy factories. The moral issue of killing their own people doesn’t even register, and it will one day come back to haunt them, when they go to the cupboard for more willing rubes to fight their wars, and those cupboards are empty…
“The day the whole thing collapses, and the last Russian dies out with their horrible literature…?”
N-o-o-o-o! Dostoevsky’s works shine a bright light on human depravity, Russia’s authoritarianism in particular. “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
Let every man go to Hell in a way of his own choosing but force no one to ascribe to another man’s orthodoxy if it is imposed at gun point.
Interesting post. I very much enjoyed Kirk’s comments above as an antidote to the Putin fanboi rants I see elsewhere. In that regard, I have a question.
I know who Brusilov is and what he did, but apparently I don’t understand enough. I don’t understand what a “Brusilov point” is. Can you help?
“I know who Brusilov is and what he did, but apparently I don’t understand enough. I don’t understand what a “Brusilov point” is. Can you help?”
The Russian 1916 Brusilov Offensive was the only strategically successful offensive during World War I. It knocked Austria-Hungary out of the war and crippled German efforts on the Western Front as the OHL had to transfer 50 divisions east to replace the completely disintegrated forces of the Dual Monarchy.
The Brusilov Offensive’s success has become an embarrassment to partisans of the Western Front militaries and their generals. The Brusilov Offensive was the single deadliest action of World War I, on both sides, and probably of all known warfare. But it was hugely successful, something no Western Front military can claim. It should be pointed out here that total combat losses on the Western Front during the entirity of WW I far exceeded total combat losses on the Eastern Front during WW I.
It has become fashionable for Western historians to claim the carnage of the Brusilov Offensive was responsible for the 1917 Russian Revolution. This is not true. The real cause of the Russian Revolution was starvation, particularly in urban areas.
The Russian people were starving in 1917 due to the loss of arable land in 1914 and 1915; about 15% of prewar Russia’s arable farmland. The remaining elderly Russian farmers also lost all their horses to the military. Horses were essential to Russian agriculture, so agricultural productivity plummeted. Additionally, 10 million refugees were driven east by the German Army and the fear of being engulfed by combat. They had to be fed.
Tsar Nicholas did not address this state of starvation and a large portion of Russia’s urban middle class revolted.
Putin is keenly aware of this history, which is why he focuses so much on economics.
^ Thanks. I kind of assumed what you explained, but I was curious if there was something I was missing such that the situation had been given a title, so to speak.
Sure, sure. But again I ask … how does this go, with a country infested with thousands of nukes? Rumor has it the USA has detailed plans to swoop in and out with the goods if Pakistan goes down. I doubt it’ll be as easy as the optimists claim, but even if it is – that’s peanuts to securing what’s in Russia.
I won’t leave this question alone, because – without a satisfying answer, more than a few people will say, “Let’s help Russia stay alive,” rather than face the notion of thousands of loose nukes about.
I don’t agree, but I certainly understand, and it will be a very compelling argument for our own sclerotic decision makers.
Color me curious.
Peter Zeihan talks so dang much about Russia ceasing to exist as a unified country in a few decades – especially after so many young men have been killed in battle. I’ve heard it so much, I wonder: okay, so what does that look like, exactly?
… does it turn into a lot of little countries, with shifting alliances to each other either fighting or cooperating?
… does China move north to take some of Siberia and the Pacific coast?
… as the Arctic warms, do trade (and military) routes open up changing the game for everybody involved?
… do other powers move in and try their hand?
It’s taken me a long time to figure out what Russia’s afraid of. I think I have some idea now.
PZ speaks of their desire to maintain an outer boundary at the various gaps in their perimeter. Chechnya, Georgia, and other skirmishes being a matter of plugging in these gaps. Ukraine being on the way to two of these gaps, therefore even if they win in Ukraine they’re not “done”.
I’ve always wondered … why? USA isn’t interested. I see no world in which we want to attack Russia. So if not us, then the world should be at peace, right? The USA is even retreating from the world, so all the less reason to fear us, right?
Oh. Wait. The USA is retreating from the world. That also means … we’re no longer keeping the other dogs on a leash.
Finally a few months ago heard more about Polish history. How they once conquered Moscow. How the arguments Putin made to Tucker about land claims in Ukraine could go the other direction.
… and how Poland buys every weapons system USA sells, even weapons systems that are still in development and not ready to sell. “Little European Texas” as HLC likes to call them.
With all this, the $1 trillion question is the same question if Pakistan becomes a failed state.
What happens to the nukes? ☢️ 🚀
I love your way with words.
“YouTuber (Mark Biernat, “a Ph.D. student in Poland and teach college economics in the US”) is making assumptions that may not be warranted.”
I disagree with your analysis. I get all my military assumptions from Polish youtubers teaching economics in the US. Russia’s catastrophic collapse – any day now – is virtually boiled into the pierogis at this point, especially after Putins recent funeral.
Nobody’s faulting you for getting all your military assumptions from Polish youtubers teaching economics in the US. That’s just sound logic.
But just because a Polish youtuber teaching economics in the US makes a military assumption, that doesn’t mean you have to agree with it.
I’ll just observe that there’s apparently a lot of “fail” in a former superpower-by-courtesy.
In terms of things I have some personal knowledge of, I can say that the Russian military efforts in Ukraine are indicative of sheer ‘effing insanity. The current trend of “motorcycle assault troops” running up against prepared Ukrainian positions is indicative of several things, none of which bode well for the rest of Russia.
One, the fact that they’re resorting to such expedients indicates that they’re either out of old Soviet armor that runs to use in these “meat assaults”, or two… And, potentially even worse, they’re acknowledging that their same-old, same-old “system of war” is now essentially overcome by reality.
You don’t send hundreds of men, expensively acquired, off on unarmored motorcycles through terrain you know is observed, on the off chance that you might get a few of them into the enemy defenses… To do what, precisely? This indicates a desperation and a bankruptcy of leadership. They’re literally throwing men up against the wall to see what sticks…
Where are the BMPs? Where are the BTRs?
If you had told me that they’d be reduced to this, and still trying to make a fight of it? I’d have told you that you were insane, and that nobody in the modern era is that f*cking dumb. I was wrong, and I’ll freely admit that fact: The Russians really are that dumb. They’re approaching the Brusilov point with a rapidity that leaves me incredulous.
If they go past it, well… New standards have been set for egregious stupidity at making war.
The really mind-boggling thing is sitting at a computer, and watching clip after clip of these failed mini-assaults hitting the Ukrainian lines like bugs hitting a windshield. The Russians are trading lives for military competence, and the Lanchester Square Law has got to start hitting soon. I think the entire system is going to come crashing down in some unpredictable way; there might be a trainload of troops that just lose their shit and then the preference cascade will happen. I thought it had begun with Pregozhin, but it didn’t. It’s even worse now, with the Russian Army’s “good” generals going on show trial: Where does that end, pray tell?
We’re all just sitting here watching the show, in awe of the fact that the ringmaster has all his bears still riding around him obediently on their little unicycles. At some point, the bears are gonna wise up, realize that there is nothing between them and that asshole with the whip, and it’s gonna be post-Brusilov Offensive, 2nd iteration.
The Tsar was in large and in charge, right up there until the point he wasn’t. The collapse of Imperial Russia took many by surprise, ‘cos they were so sure that as things had been, so they would remain.
I can’t see how this can last, and I’m amazed that it’s managed to go on for so long. There’s the fallacy of sunk costs here, and they’ve created a massive case study for historians, here. What the hell can they get out of Ukraine that would even be worth this amount of money and lives?
I wonder how this “monetary economist “ calculates the attrition costs. Russia’s best tanks were tasked with the invasion. When the tank column stalled outside Kiev, it was preyed upon by Javelin missiles.
After losing battle-ready tanks in the first wave, Russia turned to reserve materials. The reserve tanks were deficient in ways that the mainline tanks were not. So there is no generic tank model that can be used to calculate the readiness of Battalion Tactical Groups.
In addition, junior commanders suffered disproportionately in the early stages of the invasion and cohesiveness has deteriorated. In short, material and morale are qualitatively different than they were in February of 2022.
An economist can tell you the costs of war but cannot extrapolate from those numbers to say when the invasion will fail. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong but TIME and CHANCE happens to all.
Russian adventurism has cost the regime men, material and morale. It looks like they have exhausted their combat power but even a mortally wounded enemy can continue to fight until his brain is completely exhausted iof oxygenated blood.
Michael Lee Platt managed to kill and wound several FBI agents in the Miami shootout even after receiving a mortal wound to his heart. The fight isn’t over until the bad guy can’t return fire. From a logistic standpoint, this is difficult to forecast.
Prighozian demonstrated Russia’s susceptibility to an internal uprising. I see this war ending when a successful military revolt against the FSB occurs. This will happen somewhat independently of front line considerations.
[…] in four years, and Biden opens the gate to the Cuban Communist Party’s Trojan horse BattleSwarm: Wargaming Russia’s Collapse Behind The Black: Launches by Red China and Russia, A second Indian rocket startup completes […]
Tangential to the posted video, but it’s worth noting that the Poles aren’t restricting themselves to buying from Uncle Sam. Of particular note is that they’re buying/building a tank factory from Seoul; the tank in question isn’t believed to be quite up to par with a current model M1 or Leopard II, but it’s pretty good, with the hope that the Poles won’t need Korean help for its replacement.
Plus, the Koreans don’t demand the export controls the Americans and Germans do.
Moot point if the plant doesn’t get finished, of course.
bne IntelliNews analyzed Russia’s 2023 regional tax and banking statistics. This provides a clearer picture of the Russian military-industrial complex (OPK) performance than this video.
bne analysts show considerable rotation within the Russian economy, but no evidence of impending collapse. The Russian OPK appear to be outproducing the needs of the Russian forces in many categories of munitions and their Ministry of Defense has elected to warehouse the surpluses for future conflicts rather than curtail production:
Russia’s poorest regions amongst the biggest winners from the war spending
https://www.intellinews.com/russia-s-poorest-regions-amongst-the-biggest-winners-from-the-war-spending-324074/
bne also provides a useful analysis of Russia’s recent government budget performance:
Russia ups budget revenues 50% in 4M24, deficit widens
https://www.intellinews.com/russia-ups-budget-revenues-50-in-4m24-deficit-widens-325159/
“The Russian federal budget posted revenue growth of 50% year on year to RUB11.7 trillion ($128bn) in 4M24, achieving revenue growth rate of 41% y/y in April 2024 alone, according to the preliminary data from the Finance Ministry and calculations of RBC business portal. (chart)
Spending was up by 21.5% y/y to RUB13.2 trillion in 4M24, up by 25% y/y in April alone, making a deficit of RUB1.48 trillion in 4M24. Despite halving y/y from RUB3 trillion seen in the same period of 2023, the deficit came close to the full-year target of RUB1.59 trillion as early as end of April…..”
All of this has dramatically elevated Putin’s popularity within Russia:
Soaring wartime salaries are increasing support for Putin amongst the working class
https://www.intellinews.com/soaring-wartime-salaries-are-increasing-support-for-putin-amongst-the-working-class-327300/
“The war in Ukraine has put money in working class pockets and the amount has increased noticeably in the last year. People are going shopping, fuelling a feel-good consumption boom. And that is lifting support for Putin. Four out of five Russians now say they trust Putin and the last Levada Centre poll shows that Putin’s popularity has risen since the war started and currently stands at 86%, with only 11% disapproving….”
bne is based in Tallin, Estonia
“PZ speaks of their desire to maintain an outer boundary at the various gaps in their perimeter. Chechnya, Georgia, and other skirmishes being a matter of plugging in these gaps. Ukraine being on the way to two of these gaps, therefore even if they win in Ukraine they’re not “done”.
I’ve always wondered … why? USA isn’t interested. I see no world in which we want to attack Russia. So if not us, then the world should be at peace, right? The USA is even retreating from the world, so all the less reason to fear us, right?”
I think they are still fighting The Great Patriotic War (WWII to us) and see a real need to have everything from the Russian Border to the German border as a buffer. I believe the reunification of Germany wakened old ghosts in the Kremlin and Putin really wants to recreate a version of the Warsaw Pact of puppets to his west to keep Europe and it’s influences at bay.
“Oh. Wait. The USA is retreating from the world. That also means … we’re no longer keeping the other dogs on a leash.”
And that is the other part of the equation. A retreating USA emboldens people like Putin and the Ayatollahs.
The US wouldn’t attack Russia mainland, just help resist Russia’s incursions over agreed-upon borders.
China is the real threat for acquisitions, especially east of the Urals.
Nathan said:
“The US wouldn’t attack Russia mainland, just help resist Russia’s incursions over agreed-upon borders.
China is the real threat for acquisitions, especially east of the Urals.”
The fact that Putin identified NATO and the US as his primary adversary speaks volumes as to his competence and general grasp on reality.
Had he simply left everything the hell alone, NATO would have been moribund and dead well within a generation; absent his actions in Ukraine, NATO probably would have dissolved no later than about 2050.
Instead, he’s pissed away most of his legacy gear, an entire generation of young men, and for what?
He’s either insanely delusional, or he’s being played by Chinese influencers in his government. My money is actually on Shoigu being a long-term Chinese sleeper agent or at least, acting in China’s interests. Nothing else really makes sense…
The minute Putin took his eye off the Russian Far East, he basically doomed Russia as even existing, let alone remaining a “power” of any kind. The destruction of his military potential in Ukraine is insane folly that will come back to haunt Russia in decades to come…
Who remembers the game Strategic Conquest? It was awesome!
It was one of the first network games where you could play against other players on your network.
Sadly, it went away.
He has one really good point: imagine if Russia were a peaceful country. What a difference it would make to the global landscape.
Putin is a scourge upon this Earth.
“‘The war in Ukraine has put money in working class pockets and the amount has increased noticeably in the last year. People are going shopping, fuelling a feel-good consumption boom.”
Maybe they are celebrating the butchery of Bucha but they should repent in sackcloth and ashes instead.
The Lord, the Lord Almighty,
called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
But see, there is joy and revelry,
slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
“for tomorrow we die!”—Isaiah 22:12,13
It’s a Party at the End of the World. Nostrovia!
Man_in_PA said:
“He has one really good point: imagine if Russia were a peaceful country. What a difference it would make to the global landscape.
Putin is a scourge upon this Earth.”
This is how you say that you have never studied actual Russian history at all, or that you only read Russian apologia instead of honest history.
Russia has always been a blight upon the world, going back to the time of the Golden Horde. They were Quislings to the Mongols, made their money as collectors for them, and destroyed all their neighbors. It really got going when Ivan the Terrible destroyed Novgorod, and you can see the effects down to this day in the thousands of abandoned and ruined settlements in what was once the most prosperous part of European Russia.
All of Russia’s “Empire” was built on exactly what they’re trying to do in Ukraine, today. Same techniques, same depravity. They’ve operated like this for centuries, under many different masters. It’s the Russian way; that’s why they earned the sobriquet of “the penitentiary of nations” back during the Tsar’s time.
Putin’s Russia is merely behaving exactly as its internal logic and imperatives mandate; if they cease to expand by rapine, pillage, and plunder? Like a shark that stops swimming, they’ll asphyxiate.
Any fool that supports Russia supports war crimes and imperialism. You ever note how often they claimed the West that opposed them during the Cold War were “imperialists”? Yeah; purest projection, because that’s precisely what the Russians are: The last extant quasi-European empire.
The day the whole thing collapses, and the last Russian dies out with their horrible literature…? That will be a signal day for the human race. They’ve never contributed anything but ruination and slaughter, many times through their national pastime of subversion and espionage. Don’t forget that the proximate cause for WWI, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, was carried out with “guidance” from Russian operatives working inside Serbia… And, that the “reformist” Alexander II who was assassinated by the Russian anarchists that shortly spread their nihilistic poison to the rest of the world…? That was the one guy in the last couple of centuries that tried reforming the place. Didn’t work out so well, obviously.
If you have read the unsanitized version of Russian history, and still possess an iota of sympathy for the nation or the people, you’re almost certainly not right in the head. They’ve enabled every one of the nasty bastards leading them, from Ivan the Terrible on down to Lenin and Stalin; they took great joy in starving the peasantry to death, in order to steal their grain and sell it to buy factories. The moral issue of killing their own people doesn’t even register, and it will one day come back to haunt them, when they go to the cupboard for more willing rubes to fight their wars, and those cupboards are empty…
Russia really can’t collapse fast enough.
“The day the whole thing collapses, and the last Russian dies out with their horrible literature…?”
N-o-o-o-o! Dostoevsky’s works shine a bright light on human depravity, Russia’s authoritarianism in particular. “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
Let every man go to Hell in a way of his own choosing but force no one to ascribe to another man’s orthodoxy if it is imposed at gun point.
Interesting post. I very much enjoyed Kirk’s comments above as an antidote to the Putin fanboi rants I see elsewhere. In that regard, I have a question.
I know who Brusilov is and what he did, but apparently I don’t understand enough. I don’t understand what a “Brusilov point” is. Can you help?
“I know who Brusilov is and what he did, but apparently I don’t understand enough. I don’t understand what a “Brusilov point” is. Can you help?”
The Russian 1916 Brusilov Offensive was the only strategically successful offensive during World War I. It knocked Austria-Hungary out of the war and crippled German efforts on the Western Front as the OHL had to transfer 50 divisions east to replace the completely disintegrated forces of the Dual Monarchy.
The Brusilov Offensive’s success has become an embarrassment to partisans of the Western Front militaries and their generals. The Brusilov Offensive was the single deadliest action of World War I, on both sides, and probably of all known warfare. But it was hugely successful, something no Western Front military can claim. It should be pointed out here that total combat losses on the Western Front during the entirity of WW I far exceeded total combat losses on the Eastern Front during WW I.
It has become fashionable for Western historians to claim the carnage of the Brusilov Offensive was responsible for the 1917 Russian Revolution. This is not true. The real cause of the Russian Revolution was starvation, particularly in urban areas.
The Russian people were starving in 1917 due to the loss of arable land in 1914 and 1915; about 15% of prewar Russia’s arable farmland. The remaining elderly Russian farmers also lost all their horses to the military. Horses were essential to Russian agriculture, so agricultural productivity plummeted. Additionally, 10 million refugees were driven east by the German Army and the fear of being engulfed by combat. They had to be fed.
Tsar Nicholas did not address this state of starvation and a large portion of Russia’s urban middle class revolted.
Putin is keenly aware of this history, which is why he focuses so much on economics.
^ Thanks. I kind of assumed what you explained, but I was curious if there was something I was missing such that the situation had been given a title, so to speak.
@Kirk
Sure, sure. But again I ask … how does this go, with a country infested with thousands of nukes? Rumor has it the USA has detailed plans to swoop in and out with the goods if Pakistan goes down. I doubt it’ll be as easy as the optimists claim, but even if it is – that’s peanuts to securing what’s in Russia.
I won’t leave this question alone, because – without a satisfying answer, more than a few people will say, “Let’s help Russia stay alive,” rather than face the notion of thousands of loose nukes about.
I don’t agree, but I certainly understand, and it will be a very compelling argument for our own sclerotic decision makers.