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I find it rather worrying in the long term. Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades. Export oil & gas, import everythi

I find it rather worrying in the long term. Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades. Export oil & gas, import everything else, let the cronies pocket the proceeds, while having most manufacturing, defense and tech exist mostly on paper. People like Rogozin were promoted based on the loyalty and willingness to give a cut of the pie further up the ladder. Currently this trend appears to be reversing. The country is getting increasingly authoritarian [0], the economy is switching from a highly corrupt trickle-down-oil-money model, to centrally managed industrial economy driven by the war needs. I don't like where this is going. If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry. If it manages to successfully take over Ukraine, it will very likely press forward to attack other ex-USSR states. If China decides to join the party and rally out against Taiwan, we pretty much have a guaranteed WWIII until mutual exhaustion. [0] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/14/vladimir-putin-enacted-more-than-100-new-laws-today-here-are-the-ones-you-need-to-know https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/14/vladimir-putin-enact...

Wertigoyr 4y ago
Russia has plenty of things missing (chips etc.) This will take much more than just a few years.
- lotusmars 4y ago
  Sanctions will be lifted or eased long before tech embargo hits. Putin has too many points to cause pain for European politicians. For example grain shortage caused by his naval operations will cause hunger in North Africa. Revolts and refugee influx to Europe will follow. It’s enough for Europeans to put pressure on Ukraine to surrender. If it doesn’t they will spoon-feed it arms so it will surrender by fall.
  - Wertigoyr 4y ago
    I also assume that they will have to surrender but the price will be much much higher than Putin though. This will not motivate Putin to push forward.
  - JeremyNT 4y ago
    I feel like a protracted proxy war in Ukraine was never really on the table. What we've seen so far is the US and its allies forcing Russia to pay a "price" for its adventurism. The value of this is both to act as a deterrent against future actions and to strengthen Ukraine's negotiating power when it ultimately surrenders. I suspect that at a certain point everybody will be satisfied with the level of pain exacted, Ukraine surrenders, and Russia ends up with at least a large chunk of Ukraine.
    - lotusmars 4y ago
      Not a critically high price anyway. Gas prices cover everything and complicit German politicians don’t consider stopping paying. Looks like Putin’s gamble played well once again, he knows his European counterparts well.
    - qaq 4y ago
      Don't judge people by yourself Ukraine will not surrender.
      - Wertigoyr 4y ago
        It might be like this. It's already tremendous impressive how the Ukrainian people stood up to Putin. But bombing so many civilians means after a while a tremendous loss as well. It's just speculation and the hope would of course be Putin just getting out of Ukraine but Putin just has much less to loose besides his own death.
      - lotusmars 4y ago
        Europeans will force it to, unfortunately.
        qaq 4y ago
        Russians already tried to force something, will not work. No Ukrainian president will ever sign because he/she will be overthrown the next day.
NicoJuicy 4y ago
We're not there by far. Russia is doing really really bad on the battlefront. But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too. But, they currently don't have the capacity to strike an amphibious assault + their military seems to be similar to the Russian one. So yes, it could become worrisome if it happens. But i don't think that China has much to gain with attacking Taiwan from my POV. Ukraine had found a gas supply in Crimea in 2008, that could replace all Russian gas imports in Europe. That's very different than a chip factory that is set to selfdestruct during an invasion and that needs machines that are literally made by ASML+ Imec ( Europe) Ps. I was more worried about that part at the start of the war than now.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too. China has been backing Russia and it's anti-Western allies in the region (e.g., Serbia). Mostly, I think, for the value of keeping the West focussed on Russia in Europe to any “stupid ideas” they might try in their region.
  - NicoJuicy 4y ago
    Well, china's growth comes from the west and not from Russia/Serbia.
inglor_cz 4y ago
As the Spartans famously said: "If". Ukraine gets massive support from the club of the richest countries on the Earth, and, unlike Germany or France, the Anglo-Saxon behemoths seem to be committed in full. So is Poland, the necessary logistics hub for supplies. Russia is alone, even Iran refused to sell their drones to them. The full impact of this economic and military imbalance cannot be seen yet. The Ukrainian army is in midst of switching their entire weaponry from the old Soviet models to the new Western ones. This is a grueling logistical task even in peace, much more so in war. But with each new type of equipment mastered (HIMARS, M-777, Panzerhaubitze 2000, in the future possibly Western tanks and jets), the total capability edge of the UAF over their Russian counterparts grows. You can already see how the Russian offensive momentum has evaporated. They only managed to take very modest pieces of land over the last month or so, and basically none in July.
- stewx 4y ago
  > even Iran refused to sell their drones to them "White House says Iran is preparing to supply Russia with weapons-capable drones" https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/politics/iran-russia-weapons-capable-drones/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/politics/iran-russia-weapons-...
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    They deny this. I suspect we will know soon. If they really go against their word, drones are hard to hide. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-refused-supply-drones-121200139.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-refused-supply-dron...
- qaq 4y ago
  HIMARS is a very formidable addition to the arsenal, but in general quantities supplied are extremely modest to really turn the tide. Hopefully the deliveries will step up.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    They are enough to f*ck up Russian logistics behind the lines. Without a massive supply of shells from the rear to the guns themselves, the Russian artillery is incapable of executing their beloved "bomb everything into pieces" WWI-style doctrine. And the Ukrainians have destroyed an untold number of Russian ammo dumps in the last weeks. Some of the explosions have been truly spectacular. This isn't something you can easily remedy. Any new ammo dump in range will be quickly spotted by either American spy satellites or local Ukrainian spies that are probably still active in Donbass - and get blasted to hell. HIMARS is not enough to reconquer the lost territories, true. But it is enough to give Russians a forced operational pause.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry Or the current regime will collapse. That often happens with large scale defeats, especially without a democratic outlet for internal change within the system.
- pmontra 4y ago
  I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.) The worst it will happen to Putin is that he'll be locked in into Russia and have to kill more and more Russian people.
  - prox 4y ago
    The army of Russia has explicitly been kept underpowered just for that reason and generals get rotated around a lot. A strong army is a threat to Putin. Source : CSIS.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.) The reference to MAD makes sense only in the context of foreign armies (and with the M only those of major nuclear powers), but if you look at the two immediate predecessors of the modern Russian Federation (the USSR and the Russian Empire), both fell without a foreign army entering the capital, and are hardly unique in history in doing so. And to the extent status as a major nuclear power is relevant to that, the USSR had it just as much as the Russian Federation does.
    - lotusmars 4y ago
      Why even discuss MAD or nuclear when Putin gets what he wants without it? Germans finance his war efforts with billions of euros and drag their feet on arming Ukraine. Europeans generally pressure Ukraine to surrender. Why risk it? Just wait, time is on his side.
- 4y ago
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> don't like where this is going I do. Worst case, we wind up with Russia under China’s thumb. Not ideal. But Pyongyang isn’t rolling tanks over its borders. Best case: a disassembly of the Russian empire. Why Moscow tells Siberians and Tatars what to do is an anachronism, start to finish. It sort of made sense when the Kremlin had its head screwed on straight. Now, it doesn’t.
anewpersonality 4y ago
Unfortunately, this will reveal itself to be a stunningly accurate prediction.
stuckinhell 4y ago
kmlx 4y ago
> Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades. not 2 decades. it’s been a corrupt inefficient machine since the bolsheviks. the lying and the corruption persisted throughout the ussr. the whole country and it’s precursor are just lies built one on top of the other and the westerners actually believed most of it.
- wrp 4y ago
  Longer than that. Europeans have remarked on the corruption and inefficiency of the Russian state throughout history.
ac130kz 4y ago
Don't worry, they appointed a similar budget thief, and the state is so corrupt it won't be able to recover once gas and oil money are gone

Wertigoyr 4y ago

Russia has plenty of things missing (chips etc.) This will take much more than just a few years.

lotusmars 4y ago
Sanctions will be lifted or eased long before tech embargo hits. Putin has too many points to cause pain for European politicians. For example grain shortage caused by his naval operations will cause hunger in North Africa. Revolts and refugee influx to Europe will follow. It’s enough for Europeans to put pressure on Ukraine to surrender. If it doesn’t they will spoon-feed it arms so it will surrender by fall.
- Wertigoyr 4y ago
  I also assume that they will have to surrender but the price will be much much higher than Putin though. This will not motivate Putin to push forward.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  I feel like a protracted proxy war in Ukraine was never really on the table. What we've seen so far is the US and its allies forcing Russia to pay a "price" for its adventurism. The value of this is both to act as a deterrent against future actions and to strengthen Ukraine's negotiating power when it ultimately surrenders. I suspect that at a certain point everybody will be satisfied with the level of pain exacted, Ukraine surrenders, and Russia ends up with at least a large chunk of Ukraine.
  - lotusmars 4y ago
    Not a critically high price anyway. Gas prices cover everything and complicit German politicians don’t consider stopping paying. Looks like Putin’s gamble played well once again, he knows his European counterparts well.
  - qaq 4y ago
    Don't judge people by yourself Ukraine will not surrender.
    - Wertigoyr 4y ago
      It might be like this. It's already tremendous impressive how the Ukrainian people stood up to Putin. But bombing so many civilians means after a while a tremendous loss as well. It's just speculation and the hope would of course be Putin just getting out of Ukraine but Putin just has much less to loose besides his own death.
    - lotusmars 4y ago
      Europeans will force it to, unfortunately.
      - qaq 4y ago
        Russians already tried to force something, will not work. No Ukrainian president will ever sign because he/she will be overthrown the next day.

NicoJuicy 4y ago

We're not there by far. Russia is doing really really bad on the battlefront. But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too. But, they currently don't have the capacity to strike an amphibious assault + their military seems to be similar to the Russian one. So yes, it could become worrisome if it happens. But i don't think that China has much to gain with attacking Taiwan from my POV. Ukraine had found a gas supply in Crimea in 2008, that could replace all Russian gas imports in Europe. That's very different than a chip factory that is set to selfdestruct during an invasion and that needs machines that are literally made by ASML+ Imec ( Europe) Ps. I was more worried about that part at the start of the war than now.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> But i do agree it could become dangerous if China gets stupid ideas too. China has been backing Russia and it's anti-Western allies in the region (e.g., Serbia). Mostly, I think, for the value of keeping the West focussed on Russia in Europe to any “stupid ideas” they might try in their region.
- NicoJuicy 4y ago
  Well, china's growth comes from the west and not from Russia/Serbia.

inglor_cz 4y ago

As the Spartans famously said: "If". Ukraine gets massive support from the club of the richest countries on the Earth, and, unlike Germany or France, the Anglo-Saxon behemoths seem to be committed in full. So is Poland, the necessary logistics hub for supplies. Russia is alone, even Iran refused to sell their drones to them. The full impact of this economic and military imbalance cannot be seen yet. The Ukrainian army is in midst of switching their entire weaponry from the old Soviet models to the new Western ones. This is a grueling logistical task even in peace, much more so in war. But with each new type of equipment mastered (HIMARS, M-777, Panzerhaubitze 2000, in the future possibly Western tanks and jets), the total capability edge of the UAF over their Russian counterparts grows. You can already see how the Russian offensive momentum has evaporated. They only managed to take very modest pieces of land over the last month or so, and basically none in July.

stewx 4y ago
> even Iran refused to sell their drones to them "White House says Iran is preparing to supply Russia with weapons-capable drones" https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/politics/iran-russia-weapons-capable-drones/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/11/politics/iran-russia-weapons-...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  They deny this. I suspect we will know soon. If they really go against their word, drones are hard to hide. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-refused-supply-drones-121200139.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-refused-supply-dron...
qaq 4y ago
HIMARS is a very formidable addition to the arsenal, but in general quantities supplied are extremely modest to really turn the tide. Hopefully the deliveries will step up.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  They are enough to f*ck up Russian logistics behind the lines. Without a massive supply of shells from the rear to the guns themselves, the Russian artillery is incapable of executing their beloved "bomb everything into pieces" WWI-style doctrine. And the Ukrainians have destroyed an untold number of Russian ammo dumps in the last weeks. Some of the explosions have been truly spectacular. This isn't something you can easily remedy. Any new ammo dump in range will be quickly spotted by either American spy satellites or local Ukrainian spies that are probably still active in Donbass - and get blasted to hell. HIMARS is not enough to reconquer the lost territories, true. But it is enough to give Russians a forced operational pause.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry Or the current regime will collapse. That often happens with large scale defeats, especially without a democratic outlet for internal change within the system.

pmontra 4y ago
I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.) The worst it will happen to Putin is that he'll be locked in into Russia and have to kill more and more Russian people.
- prox 4y ago
  The army of Russia has explicitly been kept underpowered just for that reason and generals get rotated around a lot. A strong army is a threat to Putin. Source : CSIS.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.) The reference to MAD makes sense only in the context of foreign armies (and with the M only those of major nuclear powers), but if you look at the two immediate predecessors of the modern Russian Federation (the USSR and the Russian Empire), both fell without a foreign army entering the capital, and are hardly unique in history in doing so. And to the extent status as a major nuclear power is relevant to that, the USSR had it just as much as the Russian Federation does.
  - lotusmars 4y ago
    Why even discuss MAD or nuclear when Putin gets what he wants without it? Germans finance his war efforts with billions of euros and drag their feet on arming Ukraine. Europeans generally pressure Ukraine to surrender. Why risk it? Just wait, time is on his side.
4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> don't like where this is going I do. Worst case, we wind up with Russia under China’s thumb. Not ideal. But Pyongyang isn’t rolling tanks over its borders. Best case: a disassembly of the Russian empire. Why Moscow tells Siberians and Tatars what to do is an anachronism, start to finish. It sort of made sense when the Kremlin had its head screwed on straight. Now, it doesn’t.

anewpersonality 4y ago

Unfortunately, this will reveal itself to be a stunningly accurate prediction.

stuckinhell 4y ago

kmlx 4y ago

> Russia has been an extremely inefficient and corrupt state for the past 2 decades. not 2 decades. it’s been a corrupt inefficient machine since the bolsheviks. the lying and the corruption persisted throughout the ussr. the whole country and it’s precursor are just lies built one on top of the other and the westerners actually believed most of it.

wrp 4y ago
Longer than that. Europeans have remarked on the corruption and inefficiency of the Russian state throughout history.

ac130kz 4y ago

Don't worry, they appointed a similar budget thief, and the state is so corrupt it won't be able to recover once gas and oil money are gone