It doesn't need to last until 2025. It only needs to last longer than Ukrainian resistance, from Putin's point of view.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
Patin doesn't care about this.
He cares about "winning" and "not being humiliated" and "getting territory". The economy is pretty irrelevant to him.
He cares about "winning" and "not being humiliated" and "getting territory". The economy is pretty irrelevant to him.
That's exactly what I mean. If the revenue remains high for long enough to keep funding the war to completion, then the sanctions have manifestly failed.
Germany and Italy should have weaned themselves off such dependency years ago. This is the result of profit-driven complacency.
The revenue is not relevant for the war. The soldiers are paid in Rubles, the supplies are made in Russia. Putin doens't need Euro or Dollars for the army. What hurts more is embargos for dual use stuff. Especially microelectronics where Russia is not really self-sufficient.
Putin will go on until he runs out of soldiers. Which is already a problem.
Putin will go on until he runs out of soldiers. Which is already a problem.
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Military pay (regardless of currency) and production of war materials cost money, and its a cost that can more comfortably be borne by an economy performing well. The entire idea of sanctioning exports is the theory that without excess revenue, an aggressive government would be forced to cut expenditure on an unnecessary war.
Really? A number of your justifications for the Russian invasion end up talking about how NATO and the US, neither of which are Ukraine, have provoked or acted in some way to piss Russia off.
Ukraine has never attacked or threatened Russia, so it is being held responsible for the actions of different countries altogether, with flimsy connections drawn between them. The reality is that Ukraine is targeted because its strategically in Russia's interest to have that land in the south and east, and regardless of what Ukraine did, a casus belli would've been cooked up.
AOC defends lonely vote against seizing assets of pro-Putin Russian oligarchs
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was one of just eight House lawmakers to vote against seizing assets from Russian oligarchs. The progressive firebrand said seizing the yachts and plush apart…
www.nydailynews.com
AOC is a Russian puppet and a traitor.
Russia has hardly any internal debt and the Rubel itself is surprisingly stable in comparison to hard assets. Russia can fund the war for a very a long long time without needing foreign currency influx. They haven't even started contemplating war bonds.
Furthermore Russia has huge reserves in gold and foreign currency. Much of that is blocked which is certainly annoying for Russia but it still works as collateral because the epectation is that it becomes available again soon enough.
And if all of that wasn't enough, the exports to China, Turkey and India alone are more than enough to make up any lost revenue due to the insanely high world market prices at the moment.
Sanction might eventually impact Russias ability to wage war. But not this year nor the next. They are mostly there to annoy Russians and Russian buissness enough to build pressure. Leaving companies, cross-border payment troubles, embargoes on specific goods, logistical difficulties due to restrictions on ships ... all this is where it hurts because much of the Russian economy was still part of global supply chains or produced for the global market. Not to mention that most of the immense trade between Europe and China once went through Russia.
I mean, Russia has both a stable Ruble and high inflation but not a growing economy ? How can this be ? Primarily by goods becoming rarer or harder to ship where needed.
Europe abandoning Russian gas and oil will certainly hurt in the long turm. But only in the long term. And Putin doesn't care at all for the long term.
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AOC has never advocated civil asset forfeiture for anyone, US billionaire or otherwise. What she's advocated is redistributive tax policy, which is entirely different. She's being quite consistent.
I mean, you can make an argument that asset forfeiture should be used against Russian oligarchs, sure. But you can't make an argument that AOC is being inconsistent, because she's factually not.
Yeah, as much as I want the government to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs (and non-Russian oligarchs), it would be a clear violation of the 4th amendment if they weren't doing crimes *against the US*
Without more information I'd give her a conditional pass on the grounds she's got a point. Seizure of private assets by the government needs to be handled extraordinarily carefully, because the risk of abuse is very significant (think about the scandal of asset forfeiture carried out by some police departments). There's a massive concern that in the face of an outrage and public sentiment, politicians rush to hasty and ill-considered votes (Iraq War, anyone?), and some need to be respected should they oppose in good cause without being called traitors.AOC defends lonely vote against seizing assets of pro-Putin Russian oligarchs
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was one of just eight House lawmakers to vote against seizing assets from Russian oligarchs. The progressive firebrand said seizing the yachts and plush apart…
AOC is a Russian puppet and a traitor.
As for the rather facile cartoon, there is a significant difference between extraordinary confiscation of assets, and forms of taxation and redistribution that are the fundamental system by which societal production is distributed across the population.
This happened a week or so ago: Dmitry Muratov, editor of the independent Russian paper Novaya Gazeta, was attacked by a far-right activist with a substance composed of red paint and acetate.
www.theguardian.com
Novaya Gazeta is known as one of the few Russian outlets that doesn't toe the government line. Seven of its journalists have been murdered over the past ~20 years.
Russian intelligence behind poisoning of Nobel-laureate editor, says US
US officials say unnamed Russian spy services launched chemical attack on investigative journalist Dmitry Muratov on Moscow train
www.theguardian.com
Novaya Gazeta is known as one of the few Russian outlets that doesn't toe the government line. Seven of its journalists have been murdered over the past ~20 years.
To add to this, while Russia's military expenditure dwarfs Ukraine on paper, it's mostly going on things that have no bearing on the current war. Maintaining a giant nuclear arsenal is expensive. Developing new launch vehicles for nuclear weapons is astronomically expensive.
I think what we're seeing with the frankly fairly dismal performance of the Russian military in Ukraine is what happens when you try to be the Soviet Union with half the budget. The money is all going on maintaining these expensive symbols of national prestige, like the nuclear arsenal and the navy and the giant stockpiles of ex-Soviet military hardware. The basics, the fundamental capabilities that go into fighting a modern conventional land war, just aren't there.
And for most countries that would be fine, because most countries don't see themselves as superpowers. They focus on developing the capabilities they do have rather than trying to out-spend the US and be good at everything, because they don't expect to ever fight a war alone. Russia, for some reason, has decided it is still a superpower and needs to have all the capabilities the US does on the budget of the UK, supported by an economy the size of Italy or Australia (and which is entirely reliant on energy exports to its supposed rivals in Europe).
A lot of the problems with the Russian military are too late to fix now, and I don't think the government is capable of making the kind of cuts to prestige projects that would allow for bringing the army up to the standard of other large European economies with the budget they currently have.
I don't think Western sanctions will render Russia unable to fight this war in the short term, the military hardware is already there and governments have ways of bleeding their populations of money for whatever they need. But unless the Russian government and military staff are deluded enough to be happy with the way the army has performed, they're going to need to start putting more money in if they want to be taken seriously again, which is obviously an issue if the money isn't there.
Your arguments thus far have been hopelessly self-defeating or grossly hypocritical, so no, I don't see how it's pathetic.
You want to divorce your arguments from the direct results of those same arguments.
It's not just the hardware: I can't help but feel it's also deficient in command, doctrine, tactics, and morale.
Honestly, I don't the Soviet Union was ever good at some of these things. Even at the end of WWII, with all its amassed experience and despite making some very nice hardware, it excessively relied on brute force numbers and continued taking very heavy casualites compared to the Western Allies. I don't think it got better throughout the Cold War (if not worse because of lack of practice).
And then we get to the corrupt, authoritarian quasi-dictatorship that is modern Russia. Most such regimes do not create good militaries no matter how much they spend: promotions depend on loyalty and corruption rather than talent, troops have little motivation, and dictator PR prefers the showy value of hardware over less visible accomplishments like the basic competence of individual servicemen and units.
And then we have the complete disregard for the servicemen themselves, draining morale ever further.
They were misled about their reason for being on the border in the first place, so they were unprepared. They were then promised additional pay which didn't materialise. And the officers steal money that's sent to them from home, while the leadership covers up their deaths so the families don't find out. And thats before we even get to the unwilling conscripts.
The only thing keeping a lot of them at the front is the threat of execution for desertion.