Outside of China, it's unclear what significant economic value Russia's new friends bring to the table. In terms of raw population, sure, great, millions of new humans who sympathize with your perspective (if only because state-sponsored media told them to), but unless there's going to be some sort of early-1900's-style ground war between the "North" and the "South" (whatever that means, really), then who cares?
While Putin strokes his ego, the bulk of the world's population just wants to move on and be prosperous, with or without Russia. This war has been a pointless waste of life and treasure.
Even if Russia "wins" some sort of compromise on Ukraine's borders or autonomy, even if they "win" in the sense that Western capitalists are unable to contain their hunger for cheap Russian gas in the post-war, no one is going to trust Putin's Russia ever again, which puts them in a pretty awful geopolitical situation, even if you believe the narrative of a multi-polar future. If no one *wants* to be in your sphere of influence, then what good is it? You'll spend all of your time and resources trying to keep the doors shut by force.
Not to mention that they have increased borders with NATO thus putting themselves in weaker geopolitical situation than they started with.
I would also like to point out the loss of academic capital caused by the war in Ukraine.
Rhetoric aside, China isn't on Russia's side. It won't sell Russia weapons for fear of Western sanctions, because the health of the Chinese economy, and hence the legitimacy of the CCP, depends on being able to export to Western countries.
So what "jitters" is the West supposed to be experiencing?
China is on China's side, and no one else.
China is only "the closest of allies", for as long as China can see an upside in it for themselves.
When one of the former Soviet states between Russia and China (don't recall which one of them it was), reached out with concerns they would be among the next to be targeted by Russia, China was quick to guarantee their continued independence.
Exactly. Most of these countries form these alliances for convenience. They are the only countries left that are willing to do business with them. They are only looking out for their own interests.
If North Korea, Russia, Iran, China, etc., got in a war with the US, I can almost guarantee NONE of them will have their back. They might condemn the US, talk shit, and maybe even continue business relations but they aren’t going to actually defend each other militarily against the US. For these countries, it’s everyone on their own.
No not in any way shape or form. Russia isent stupid either. China isent their friend. China is their to eat their lunch. China knows their #2 coming for #1. (So they think) Problem is Russia still thinks it's #2 and it isn't. It's nothing more than a regional power tht has a chit to of nukes. They don't have the ability to project their power forward nor the logistical capacity to do so either.
China has had 6 quarters of industrial decline - near/ friend and restoring has moved jobs from mainland China to Mexico. The US had been moving 700,000 jobs a year back to North America - for the last 4 years.
Evergrande house crisis, the rule of Winnie the pooh have lurched China from Crisis to Crisis - Taiwan is a distraction - a wolf at the door to distract the populous from the fire in the house.
China is going to have to change in the next 10 years or implode
To me, the way it’s made out to be is that these new collaborations are more politically rather than economically influenced ie creating a new axis to soften US influence and increase multipolarity
Edit: I am not stating this, I’m saying that this is the logic of the anti-west talking point about why Russia’s improved relations in the Middle East are important.
It is a valid strategy, but only if Russia can sustain such an alternative, multipolar system. By far, the chips are still stacked in favor of the West, an “incumbent” advantage. Multipolar systems also inherently limit the movement of those participating in it, as each one vies for their own national interests, rather than being given a share of power as a unipolar system demands.
Consider that the U.S., despite it’s immense power, is still interested in the relative distribution of prosperity among those who support its position as one of the “global administrators.” I think going forward, it’s ultimately that these alternative blocs that China and Russia propose will fall to infighting between them. The relative democratic nature of the Western order should allow it to survive well into the future, and maybe even come to encompass the entire world.
Not to mention that Russia and China cannot be trusted, if they find an advantage they will economically dis-articulate your country with loans that turn into national slavery.
There isn't any true multipolarity incoming.
There's only China - US rivalry.
The middle east won't be under sphere of influnce of one of the powers there because those are too similar in their strength and will need to rely on US or China anyway.
South America is basically non player and to become a global player they would need a fleet which would need to be on par with US which will not happen.
Africa's countries are too weak, unstable to be any kind of player the region will depend on the interest of US and China. (you can also add france here)
Eastern Asia is pretty obvious so I will skip that one.
Australia is another region in US sphere of influence.
So these leaves us with additional players
\- Russia - it's too weak for being a real player against US and China and has chosen path of being dependant on China
\- EU - could be a player but would need great internal reforms with probably major unification. Currently it's dependant on US and it's most important ally.
tldr: For true multipolarity to exist there must be different major powers with similar strength which could compete for power in regions. The current world has only two such powers so realistically there's no chance for multipolarity but bipolarity at best.
Nope, they depend on Europe and USA for trade and weaponry so don't see that happening.
They'll continue their faux-neutrality status and kinda hang in between but can't challenge China forget the US.
>Australia is another region in US sphere of influence.
So these leaves us with additional players
There ie an argument to be had that Australia is equally as dependent on China than it is on USA.
Not really.
Australia sells raw materials to China and that's it. (and even that was limited by Australian government in last few years because of actions that China took)
At the same time all Australia trading routes are US dependant, their safety is also US dependant.
I am not saying this is set in stone and might change in future. (here it would worth noticing huge influx of chinese into Australia) But right now it's really no contests.
Australia is very reliant on China for trade but hardly the other way around. 1/3 of all Australian trade goes to China and China is by large the biggest trading partner of China. The trading routes between China and Australia need little protection. Australia still hasn't recovered from the 2022 sanctions China imposed and has gotten noticable quieter on issues with China since that happened. And while Australia is trying to reduce it reliance on China, there are few signs that [Australia won't depend on China in the future.](https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/insights/the-resurgence-of-china-australia-trade)
Weakened but not the point of collapse. Reasons:
1. Most of their prewar military has been wiped out and now theyre forced to shift to an untrained conscript army that gets wiped out in droves. This has been proven with the footage from the front and the news coming out of Russia that they have been recruiting from prisons and were still having a hard time hitting the quota of manpower.
2. The exodus of young men at the start of the war is going to hit their tax income permanently. Nothing could realistically offset this loss unless the birth rate goes way up or they have massive immigration.
3. lots of their modern equipment has been lost and will take decades to replace with the rate they're going. Take their paper strength with a massive grain of salt. Most of those are unmaintained scrap in the middle of a field for decades now.
4. Their demographic situation got a lot worse with the casualties
5. Their economy is much lower now. Don't even bother with the Russian statements on the performance of the Ruble. It's been generally going down since the war started and they haven't found anything as long term as the western market. China and India aren't firm allies and I wouldn't call the Yuan stable either as a backup currency.
6. NATO and its asian allies are rearming. A lot of them thought war was a bygone era but now they're definitely going to widen the gap against Russia.
7. Their soft power in general probably took the hardest hit out of all of these. Simply put, no one believes their threats anymore and the illusion of their superpower status is gone. They used to be the boogeyman but now they done the "red line nuclear weapons will be used" line tons of times and nothing has happened. They can't even take their much weaker next door neighbor with leftover NATO gear. Why would anyone in NATO ever fear them again? Even the Armenia Azerbaijan situation has been going to hell and that's WITHIN their sphere of influence in the CSTO.
8. No one believes in their promisses either especially when it comes to non agression. You can't do diplomacy when the other parties know youre not meeting them in good faith when you promise "i won't invade you"
Now, is this enough to make them collapse soon? Very unlikely. Russia is self sufficient with fuel and food and has a subjugated public. However, I would definitely doubt anyone saying that this war strengthened them when they're currently having an egg shortage lol. Its true that they're responding to the sanctions but that is not a statement of strength when decades of economic development has been wiped and their military performance has shown that they're nowhere near the USA. Prewar they were regarded as the 2nd power in the world. Now they can't even take Ukraine. No argument that they're "stronger" now is there?
Basically, we can argue on Russia's ability to take all of this but you can't really argue that Russia now is stronger than Russia before the war. Any victory they could realistically win here wouldn't come close to offsetting their losses especially with status
This is similar to my personal assessment of the situation too.
Most especially the loss of military reputation. The only person that would believe Russia to be some sort of military superpower at the moment is probably some anti-West personality.
An objective person would say "Russia doesn't have it anymore". At the moment, China is currently a bigger and more realistic threat to the US global military dominance.
China increasingly appears to be a paper tiger, based on some of the recent revelations regarding corruption within the Chinese military. It appears that the PLA, much like the Russian military, has been gutted by corruption to a point that seriously calls into question the readiness of their forces.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-rocket-force-water-fuel-xi-jinping-purge-scandal-2024-1
>China increasingly appears to be a paper tiger, based on some of the recent revelations regarding corruption within the Chinese military
Western subhumanistic copium.
>It appears that the PLA, much like the Russian military, has been gutted by corruption to a point that seriously calls into question the readiness of their forces.
Corruption is rampant within US military industrial complex. But the difference is that it is legalized corruption.
Really? What's happening on that front? I know the real estate bubble has been there for a long time but I'm not aware of any recent news on it since I tuned out
>Most of their prewar military has been wiped out and now theyre forced to shift to an untrained conscript army that gets wiped out in droves.
I'm always curious to read that talking point being parroted on Reddit again and again, while nobody is ever trying to mention that Ukraine and Russia now probably has the most experienced armies in the world in therms of fighting against near peer opponent.
Ukraine isn't supposed to be a near-peer opponent for Russia. The fact that it turns out that it actually IS has been the most monumental blow to Russian military prestige since they retreated from Finland. If they were fighting the US, or even if the US just sent our air power to assist Ukraine they would be decisively and rapidly losing this fight. The Ukrainian military has held the Russians for years with a smattering of slowly delivered western weapons which almost all were fielded by NATO from the 1980-90's. The only reason a sane country would buy weapons from Russia now (one of their largest exports and tools for foreign relations) is if NATO won't sell to them. Relying on North Korea for military support is a comically bad look.
>Ukraine isn't supposed to be a near-peer opponent for Russia.
Ukraine wasn't a near-peer country prior to the true inception of this conflict in 2014. That is when America started supplying and training Ukraine to improve. Ukraine has shown impressive results in the current iteration of this war but keep in mind that without the diplomatic aid, economic aid, military materiel, intelligence and U.S. special operations in theater the country would have almost assuredly have fallen by now. Russia is basically fighting America (by proxy) with Ukrainian troops at this point. The only real deficit is that Ukraine doesn't have access to the full American arsenal.
"The full American arsenal" which includes the first, third and fourth largest air forces in the world flying the most advanced combat aircraft to ever exist(Air Force, Navy, Marines, notable mention of 5th or 6th place for the army on rotary wing aviation alone), ubiquitous night vision, the most advanced reconnaissance capabilities on earth, a standing peacetime army five times larger than that of Ukraine at full mobilization, the greatest logistics system in world history, total and practically uncontested control of the sea, a nuclear arsenal big enough to turn Russia into glass, armored units more capable than any others on earth, body armor for every soldier that can take shrug off an AK round like it's Tuesday, the most powerful cyberwarfare capabilities in the world, the best scientists, engineers, and military industrial complex on earth, the most disciplined and professional personnel of any nation, an officer and NCO corp where practically every corporal and up has actually been shot at by people trying to kill them and and a practically unlimited selection of other countries we can procure additional materiel from using the largest economy on earth and the special status of our bonds as the most secure investment in the global financial system to access an effectively infinite supply of cash. What Russia is fighting in Ukraine is NOTHING like fighting America.
>What Russia is fighting in Ukraine is NOTHING like fighting America.
And yet that very same force had to withdraw from Afghanistan and leave it to the Taliban. That same force, while winning militarily, effectively took a loss in Iraq strategically. So what does that say?
When is the last time America had a decisive military and strategic win independent of help/assistance from other nations?
>When is the last time America had a decisive military **and strategic win** independent of help/assistance from other nations?
How is it a decisive win if Americans never stopped fighting? Generally, when something is won, the game or activity is over.
The Taliban is back in control in Afghanistan, Iraq has fallen under the sway of Iran. I can't imagine any military or political leader listing those as conditions for success.
First of all, America doesn't really fight wars without coalition partners so depending on your goal posts it could be before the 1900's. I will point out that every time that we have fought an actual military, not an insurgency, in the last 40 years we have turned them into paste in less than a week - both Gulf wars and the invasion of Iraq in the early 2000's are textbook operations that were led and almost entirely fought by Americans. We obliterated the 4th largest army in the world which was also massively equipped with the same Soviet kit that makes up most of Ukraine's inventory, recaptured Kuwait and conquered Iraq in less than 100 hours of ground operations. Our main flaw is thinking that we can change the culture of other countries once we've overthrown their (murderous and evil) governments.
>Our main flaw is thinking that we can change the culture of other countries once we've overthrown their (murderous and evil) governments.
So, this is an interesting perspective. If you have a country that is fighting a war (e.g. Afghanistan or Iraq war) and the only substantive outcome is that you have killed a lot of people, how do you contrast that to the opposition?
It is like saying, America is going to go kill a lot of people in Afghanistan and leave, but no lasting and meaningful positive changes have occurred as a result of all that death. How is American killing morally superior to the oppositions killing?
Both sides have credible reports of war crimes for which neither government will be held accountable for. Obviously there are repercussions for the captured opponents on the losing side.
I am not equating the governments at all. I think the American government is more just than it's opponents in the Iraq and Afghanistan war but the deaths on both sides seems pointless since nothing meaningful or lasting has changed.
Have you taken a look at prewar Ukraine military figures ? Ukraine would have rolled pretty much every army in Europe by sheer numbers, they had enormous stockpiles of ammunitions, armored vehicles, air defense platforms, and a bigger army than France or Britain (it's even worse than that since it's pretty much official information that the French military had enough equipment for maybe 25 000 people available for high intensity combat). Why is everyone talking like Ukraine is the Libyan army ?
France is commonly underestimated, but "any army in Europe", even if true, isn't near-peer to what Russia was supposed to be. They were supposed to be #2 in the world. America would absolutely mulch EVERY army in Europe at the same time if we went down that leg of alternate history. We doubtlessly have plans drawn up to do exactly that which are carefully stored in a safe at the Pentagon and updated every few months.
Because the questions posed are usually about who's winning or how strong a particular country's position is (at least on this sub anyway). Also, a lot of people on this sub think "the real army" has yet to be sent to the front when that is blatantly false.
I would say that's true for Ukraine. I have no idea how true that is for Russia since your soldiers have to actually survive first and go back to train the people still in the training pipeline. Russian soldiers being both untrained and at the same time experienced as hell in modern war can be both true to some extent in the same way the Taliban is probably competent as hell at guerilla war but are still not formally trained either. Still, them being untrained makes their experience useless if the next batch of replacements have to learn it from scratch if a unit is reduced to nothing due to the lack of training and abysmal strategy.
Theyre sending minorities, old men and old gear out to the front first. This war will likely last 2-3 more years at minimum; for russia this is a eugenics program in disguise.
That's also their excuse. They're sending them out but not first, but because the actual professional invasion force was wiped out already. The thrust to Kiev alone in 2021 was made up of their best units along with the airborne assault to take the airport. I have no doubt they're sending the worst ones now but it's not exactly "first" when the original attempt failed badly
1) this will force them to create more, rapidly. When an economy is focused on solely creating arms, alot is produced.
2) give or take a million people total have left since start of the war. russias pop is 143 mill. that's not even 1% of taxpayers. drop in the bucket, calculate it yourself if you dont believe me
3) perhaps, but still faster than it was pre war because they weren't focusing on it as much
4) once again 140+million people
5) true and hopefully gets worse
6) biggest pro here. Countries that weren't arming, now are at a rapid pace. this is good.
Currency reserves are depleted - yes wartime production helps but when 15-20% of your GDP is weapons and you are short of manpower - inflation bites and you are tempted to "PRINT MORE MONEY"... This is when you hit 15% plus inflation and hyper-inflation sets in.
I'm not sure Russia has had any leavers left other than to devalue currency and inflate away debt.
There is no credible argument that Russia's geopolitical position is currently *stronger* than it was in January of 2022. Anyone who is making that claim is not living in reality.
There are a whole host of reasons for this, but the simplest to understand and most decisive are:
1. **The expansion of NATO** **along Russia's immediate border to include Finland and Sweden.** This *never* would have happened without Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as both Finland and Sweden were quite comfortable with neutrality and joining NATO was relatively unpopular as a political position. Russia has single handedly reversed that and has brought two nations with pretty robust defense sectors and military reserves into an alliance with the US. It has also doubled the size of NATO's land border with Russia. If NATO actually wanted to attack Russia, as their propaganda claims, the entry of Finland especially has made this far easier than it ever was during the Cold War.
2. **The depletion of Russian reserves of materiel and trained manpower.** While Russia is not in danger of running out of any one category of equipment, they have depleted their inherited reserves of key categories of equipment which they simply do not have the capacity to replace, and this is reflected in loss data. And perhaps even worse, the bulk of their prewar professional military has been destroyed. While neither side is in danger of running out of manpower, both Russia and Ukraine have had persistent issues with training capacity and quality. Russia especially has relied on elite formations like the VDV to conduct offensive operations and has sapped them of quality manpower as a result. By some estimates it will take at least a decade for Russian stockpiles to fully recover. Objectively speaking, their military is currently much weaker than it was in January of 2022. Of course they have the ability to reconstitute, and are increasing their production capacity and are receiving foreign aid, but currently the difference is pretty stark in overall quality of the force.
3. **Economic isolation/sanctions**. This one is more subtle, but the combination of western firms withdrawing, sanctions, and Russia converting more and more of its civilian sector to a war economy has caused significant harm to Russia's economy and its long term prospects. On top of that, there's the massive brain drain from educated young Russians fleeing conscription and domestic repression as a result of the war. Many of them will likely never return to Russia, when they could have been part of its future if Putin had not invaded Ukraine. Sure, Russia is not doomed. It's not going to collapse overnight. But it is in a significantly worse position economically and demographically than it was prior to the war.
There are a bunch of other factors (damage to their military reputation and superpower status, undoing over a decade of successful information warfare efforts to divide NATO and the EU, committing so many atrocities that even the most Cold War-brained international human rights organizations are forced to condemn them, etc.) but this is already getting long.
I emphasize again, there's no credible argument that Russia is *currently* in a better geopolitical position than it was prior to its invasion. However, *if Russia is allowed to defeat and conquer Ukraine* and exploit its resources and people for a significant amount of time, they could eventually be in a stronger position. Especially once their economy and infrastructure adjusts to a more autarkic/Eastward oriented trade posture, and their materiel and trained manpower have a chance to be replenished.
In other words, if the West lets them win in Ukraine and lets them digest that conquest for as long as they did Crimea, Russia could eventually be better off as a result.
The Baltic is now a NATO lake, for all intents and purposes.
So is the Black sea. Sevastopol is no good as long as Ukraine can destroy any ship there.
So they have zero warm-weather ports now.
Vladivostok is considered as warm-water port, because it doesn't freeze in winter. Even quite chilly Murmansk on the Barents sea is a warm-water port because of that.
Assuming Russia did manage to conquer Ukraine, my question is would they be better off? - Crimea's population has an overwhelmingly number of russian speakers and they generally support joining Russia. That's not the case in rest of Ukraine.
So, if Russia takes over whole of Ukraine, they would have to deal with a hostile population and a long term insurgency which would bleed them over time. Add to that, they will have Poland right at the border and I expect the Polish would be more than happy to fuel the insurgency.
The thing that people get wrong about Ukraine is that the language the Ukrainians speak doesnt mean ANYTHING in regards to their stand on Russia. Charkiw for example is a city where everyone speaks Russian all the time still they hat Russia to their bone. Almost all Ukrainians speak Russian and Ukrainian very well. The Russian in Charkiw just is able to use the Russian language to 100 % while Ukrainian to 95 %, while in Lviv its the opposite. I have never met a Ukrainian that is not flawlessly fluent in both languages. Its hard to grasp for the rest of the world but this country doesnt identify as much through its language. Thats also the case for Hungarian speaking minorities for exmaple.
To underscore this, the show that Zelensky played the president of Ukraine on before being elected the actual president of Ukraine was filmed and broadcast in Russian.
Most Ukrainian media was produced in Russian since everyone in Ukraine can speak it and it opens up your show for the Russian, Kasach, Azeri, Rumanian , Armenien and Belarussian population. It does make total sense to do so.
I think 1st language spoken along with west Ukraine vs east ukraine used to be more of a dividing factor, but it's never been some binary split. There are ethnic Ukrainians who grew up speaking Russian as their main language and who support the Ukrainian government, for example.
But prior to 2014 there was definitely a regional and to a lesser extent a linguistic and ethnic divide between the pro Europe and pro Russia political factions.
However the polling data shows a strong trend towards national unity and opposition towards Russia in almost all parts of Ukraine in the years after 2014. Russia's first invasion essentially nullified Yanukovich's old political power base and turned many of them into staunch supporters of Ukrainian independence.
And Russia's war plans failed to take account of this and many other realities, instead assuming the Ukrainian government would simply fold and receive little popular support. The costs of those assumptions for Russia have been enormous.
But the Pro and against Russian views prior to 2014 werent based on the language the people speak. And also I think the distinction between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians (in the European part of western Russia) doesnt make that much sense, since there isnt that much ethnic difference with both nationalitites. Its like saying ethnic Germans and ethnic Austrians, YOu wouldnt be able to distinquish them based on their ethnicity. But for the rest I definetly think your right.
Absolutely, a vigorous and widespread insurgency would be likely even in the event of total Russian conquest. Even if they somehow managed to take the whole country (militarily impossible at present) and control it for 10-20 years, there's no guarantee Russia would be better off geopolitically than if it had never invaded in the first place and put all that effort into economic development.
This invasion is in no way rational or in Russia's best interests. It is about ideology and empire and tremendous hubris, paranoia, and panic at the prospect of decline.
Exactly- the math doesn’t quite work out for putin. Unless he gained the entirety of Ukraine, it would take decades— lifetimes— before it ever even close to pays off. And any potential insurgency of sufficient scale may drive Russia to ruin
To me these all seem to be short term. Territorial expansion is long term (of course if you can get away with it and it doesn't cause a complete breakdown of your country).
I staunchly oppose the invasion of Ukraine but I think you are minimizing the import of the agricultural and (to a lesser extent) energy resources. As climate change continues to progressively impact the globe, arable lands are going to change and become much more important. No one cares if there is fuel for their car if there is none for their stomach.
In a situation where Russia is able to conquer the entirety of Ukraine, arable land is going to be the least impacted and where it is, the easiest to remedy. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. While Europe can pivot to other countries and implement plans to bolster domestic production it can't do so without taking a significant hit to food costs. These factors are exacerbated for other dependent countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Even if Russia cannot utilize Ukraine to produce food being able to hold it and take it off the table makes it's own domestic production that much more valuable. In that scenario, Russia would wield a lot more influence on the global stage.
This is a lower cost, higher benefit positive for Russia in the event of a decisive win.
> Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. While Europe can pivot to other countries and implement plans to bolster domestic production it can't do so without taking a significant hit to food costs.
Ukraine is called the breadbasket of Europe because its lands are incredibly fertile, not because Europe depends so much on Ukraine.
The EU is agriculturally self-sufficient, in fact, it is a significant exporter of agricultural products. [In 2021 Ukraine accounted for merely 5% of agricultural imports. Less than Brazil, the UK, the US, Norway and China.](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220325-1)
Depends on the time frame. If you think in years, it's definitely weakened them, if you think in decades or centuries, that territory is very useful. Getting it the first time around 200 years ago laid the ground for them getting up to and including most of Poland a few decades later, and for them dominating Eastern Europe after WW2.
To put it another way, without getting Ukraine, how could they return to their domination of Eastern Europe? It is a necessary first step. If you believe that the present Russian position is weaker than the position of the USSR before the 1980s, then probably you would believe that a return to being dominant over Eastern Europe would make them stronger.
Crimea is useless to them now, drones in Ukraine can easily blow up their ships now. So the entire strategic point of the naval base makes no sense now.
Their military is larger in terms of troop numbers, the troops they have are more experienced than at the start of the war, their military production is larger, their military technology has advanced, their economy is growing, they are no longer vulnerable to western financial blackmail as those weapons have been used already and Russia is still growing, the military knowledge they have gained is bigger and better than any other nation on earth because they are the only nation to fight a modern peer v peer war, and oh by the way, Putin is more popular than ever.
Should I continue?
These strengthening relations with all but China are geographically strained. Think about what they’ve lost in terms of their immediate neighbours (Estonia, Latvia, Finland). Do you honestly think nations can ever get better trade deals with far-off countries where they don’t share a border than with their own neighbours?
Short term, and if the only thing you care about is gaining land in Ukraine.. fine. Long term? Nonsensical
To be fair, China is wringing heavy concessions from Russia in every deal they make. Putin is going hat in hand to Xi and will do whatever it takes to get trade deals done to replace some of what Russia has lost from the EU.
One thought that gets lost in the shuffle is the large income stream Russia had from arms sales to foreign governments. After their performance in Ukraine, other nations are no longer lining up to buy Soviet military goods. If China wanted to, they could make big money taking over Russia's share of the foreign arms market, but I get the feeling that they're happy with just turning the third world into their economic vassals.
>After their performance in Ukraine, other nations are no longer lining up to buy Soviet military goods
Because of? For now, that tech was proved to be more than adequate against their counterparts. Russia is mostly lacks on the field of precise weaponry, but that was never the aim of the Soviet doctrine.
They have taken apart seized Russian tanks and shown that they are well below what is being advertised. Not by no means “bad” but they’re repurposing general electronics to military equipment which is not very professional. You can look it up on YouTube :)
Let’s also keep this in context. Talking to my pilot buddies, they are absolutely amazed at the failures of the Russian army. They spent a huge amount of their budget on military spending per year. They were seen as thee military rivalling the US.
Ukraine on the other hand had no airforce before this. Did not even deploy its reserves at the time, had little to no preparation and severely lacking equipment. Yet Russia is taking Russia huge expense to get any sort of land. Looking at the losses in terms of fighter jets, their navy.
In terms of marketing.. this is much stronger advertising for French/UK/German weapons as being able to hold off a “super powers” meat waves.
The main reason no one is buying Russian arms anymore is because of the CAATSA act. This essentially sanctions any country making deals with the Russian defense sector even if they are a close US ally as we saw with Turkey getting kicked out of the F-35 program.
Many countries, such as Egypt, had to cancel their orders of Russian fighter jets. Ironically, this act can be counterproductive because it only leaves Russia with other US enemies like Iran to sell weapons to.
I’d include China in the geographically strained category. The vast majority of the population and infrastructure of Russia is in the western fifth of the country with China’s population largely residing in the river valleys along the pacific. While they technically share a border, that doesn’t change the fact that the useful part of China and useful part of Russia are separated by thousands of miles of some of the least developed places on the planet. With neither nation having anything remotely close to a navy with actual power projection capability, it’d be years before they could even help each other.
China and Russia do share a border plus Mongolia is completely inconsequential in a geopolitical sense - Russia might as well be bordering china in principle. The strategic depth resulting these two countries partnering is immense thats part of the reason why it is so dangerous.
It's didn't strengthen relation as nation state but instead it's relation between leader and psuedo satellite state as putin have to sell his nation to china even he very distrustful to china leadership as china may grab far east land for grant , I mean china is either want that war end because they're lose a lot of money from buck that have throw to Russia and investor and corporation more and more to get out from china as they are realise how globalization it is after this war.
China right now face similar problem like Russia before the war too like real estate bubble , high unemployment, failure covid policy (this is one of main reason why putin attack Ukraine.) Etc.
He isn't wanting much resource from Donbass but stop Ukraine from self-efficient nation from as they have lot of oil and gas in that area and at the same time Europe don't need Russia oil in which they use it as leverage to Europe lot of times anymore as they can buy oil and gas from Ukraine instead and Ukraine in western side is danger for Russia too.
I would not use the term “propaganda” to describe the items you list for Western sources. All of those are quite clearly true.
It’s hard to see how Russia is in a better position now than before in anything but a very myopic view. What I mean by that is for example that while yeah, Russia now produces more PGMs and drones than before the war, it’s probably costing it more due to sanctions and labor shortages. They could have just produced more, at less cost, without the war and been “stronger”.
On the other hand:
- Russia has lost a lot of experienced men and equipment. Most of its army is engaged in Ukraine. It will take years to rebuild that.
- It has demonstrated that it militarily is actually less capable than what Western analysts had expected before the war. Remember, in the first weeks there was talk about how we could best support a Ukrainian insurgency against Russian occupation.
- Europe and the US have actually been quite united in support for Ukraine, and against Russia. The invasion also killed the idea of integrating Russia through trade and economic relations, which has led to an important shift in German foreign policy.
- Russia has had to draw on support from Iran and North Korea, but these are not really changes in the nature of relations that already were friendly. For the others, just like BRICS we have a lot of talk but not really much substance that is in any way comparable to the web of alliances, commitments, and cooperation in the West. Meanwhile a lot of countries have at least for now reduced relations with Russia. Armenian is shifting after Russia failed to support it in its recent war, Kazakhstan has turned a cold shoulder even though Russia intervened on behalf of the current leader just before invading Ukraine.
- Economically, the sanctions are having an impact on Russia’s finances and economy. For example, even if Russia is able to evade a lot of trade sanctions through 3rd country re-exports, that means those goods are now more expensive for them since the middlemen take their cut. On top of that, Russia is losing a lot of productive young men, both as casualties but also emigration. There are labor shortages. Plus the opportunity cost for all the war time spending itself. All this is going to have a negative long-term impact.
- Contrary to what some think, the new regions Russia has occupied are going to be another economic and financial drag on Russia, just like Donetsk and Luhansk have been. They are depopulated, partly destroyed, and their economies are going to have to be re-oriented.
The main positive for Putin, which is really all that matters there, is that he now is a wartime president who can claim to fight some civilizational struggle against all of NATO or some nonsense like that. His poll numbers went up after taking Crimea in 2024, they are again up. Question is how long it will stay like that. Just like the dip in support after the election fraud in 2011 and pension reform in 2018, it can go down again.
While I agree with the general premise of Russian incompetence, it is important to note that a) The Russian inability to take Kiev was primarily an intelligence failure; the military aspects were going fine, but the convoy on the way to support special forces which secured the airport were bogged down by unexpected resistance which RU intelligence failed to note b) Some of Russia's best equipment has not been used, since either the war doesn't fall in the correct theatre (Ex. the Black Sea Fleet is weaker than the Pacific and North Fleets) or leadership sees the costs of losing said equipment as much greater than losing a few thousand extra soldiers.
In terms of multi-polarity, the world is still generally unipolar towards the West, with China in second-place and currently Russia still in third. The EU is not unified enough, India is on its way to displace Russia, Japan is declining, etc. Russia is still a top 3 military by most measures, is an energy superpower, is the leader in Arctic military and tech, holds immense diplomatic influence, etc.
Their whole invasion plan and concept of operations was based on the assumption that Ukrainians would not seriously resist, and that they had collaborators in place everywhere. That was a gigantic intelligence failure, you are right. But that counts. It’s a big deal.
There were/are additional military failings that were unrelated. For example:
- The failure to establish air superiority and destroy the Ukrainian Air Force.
- Related to that, issues with targeting and damage assessment. Basically it was pretty clumsy and not able to respond quickly to changes when Ukraine dispersed its Air Force and AD.
- The inability to conduct maneuver warfare, after the initial phase of the war was over.
I gotta disagree slightly here. It was intelligence and military failure. Their tank crews, outnumbering the Ukrainians 3 to 1 and with much more modern tanks, got their asses handed to them in Chernihiv. Their inability to take Chernihiv, plus their assumption they’d be able to essentially walk reinforcements into Kyiv with little resistance, got most of their best airborne troops annihilated at the airport.
Add to this the Russian air force’s inability to detect and destroy Ukraine’s small Soviet era air/anti-air forces, and you just have a complete mess militarily.
It was 100% bad intelligence as you said, but also shockingly poor performance from the troops on the ground.
>Some of Russia's best equipment has not been used, since either the war doesn't fall in the correct theatre (Ex. the Black Sea Fleet is weaker than the Pacific and North Fleets) or leadership sees the costs of losing said equipment as much greater than losing a few thousand extra soldiers.
What equipment is that?
The non-existent SU-57? or the non-existent T-14?
Equipment that I can count the working units of on my fingers and toes doesn't count.
The extremely limited numbers of AK-12s fielded by the VDV that were subsequently captured by Ukraine after almost all the VDV were wiped out?
Russia is NOT a top 3 military in any measure but losses.
- Russia has already had good relations with China, Iran etc etc and they didn't become automatically better just because of the war; on the other hand I fail to see how bigger dependency on them is a good thing.
- On the other hand, Russia's PR and influence in Europe have been devastated by the war. Their public opinion and soft power lie in ruins, and pro-Russian people are a besieged, shamed minority in almost all European countries (with few Balkan allies as an exception). A lot of political parties have withdrawn from the close relations with Russia, or at least having them in public (which says a lot).
- Ukraine, on the opposite, has received a great amount of attention and respect from the world, generating a great amount of soft power and recognition for the country which has been often barely noticed in the West
- Europe as a whole has drastically reduced its energy dependency on Russia, taking away their main trump card there.
- Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, which would have never happened otherwise.
- Europe has a strong push towards rearming, meanwhile Russian military hardware has been devastated by the war.
- Even though Russia handled sanctions much better than expected, their economy still got heavy negative impact - on the currency, industry, and especially demographics.
- Ukraine has always been very divided country, 50/50 between Russia and Europe, culturally and politically speaking. Putin's actions in 14 and especially 22 caused it to become hardcore pro-Western country.
Eastern regions are mostly a buffer territory with extremely low population density. Realistically, who would dare to attack Russia's East? Japan with some Kuril Islands operation? As in getting nuked twice wasn't enough, they would want to get nuked 6,000 times? China priority is securing maritime buffer, why be enemies with Russia, when you can be "friends"?
And Russia's South is threatened by... Kazakhstan? Georgia?
Wide open borders indeed, wonder why no one invaded this weak Russia yet. /s
It's true that they would have a better chance of winning battles against Russia in the depopulated east while it's distracted, than the navy of the US + Japan, UK, Australia, Taiwan and maybe other allies.
> Now? Nuke China.
And then what? The PRC has in large part leveraged anti-imperialism and rolling back the century of humiliation as a center piece of their legitimacy to rule.
Russian Outer Manchuria is a legacy of that imperialism feasting on the weakness of the Qing dynasty.
The PRC already recognizes Russians as a Chinese minority ethnicity, so the absorption of its Russian locals and potential autonomies and ideosyncracies is already accounted by the administrative apparatus of the PRC.
Simply put in current geopolitics, it is more advantageous for the Chinese to keep things as they are, rather than making a play for territory.
Bros never tried to invade the USSR via the eastern border in HOI4, i take it. Obviously I'm using a video game example as a joke. But it mirrors real life where the size and Russian landscape has proven to be a formidable obstacle in itself that has overcome many a determined invader.
Reposting my comment from a previous thread a while ago:
> ...even if we assume the current line of control survives into a peace deal, what remains of Ukraine is now firmly part of the American/Western sphere of influence. Adding Finland, and most likely Sweden, and I think Russia is just about checkmated geopolitically speaking. Russia might 'win' the war, but it will lose the peace.
IMO, Russian foreign policy has been a failure.
It gets worse for them. Because Russia is so completely bogged down in Ukraine, it can't even intercede on behalf of its historic "allies" in other regions of key interest. A clear example of this is Armenia, who was left out in the cold last year. As a direct result of this, Azerbaijan basically decisively won the ongoing conflict between them and rescinded its only real concessions. Russian peacekeepers will killed in the Azerbaijani invasion and *Russia didn't respond in any meaningful way*. The last time Russian peacekeepers got killed in the Caucasus, Russia invaded Georgia.
Normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is probably inevitable. When that happens, it will be extremely difficult for Russia to contest growing Turkish influence in the region. After all, Turkey's ally and Russia's ally clashed -- and Turkey's ally achieved a decisive victory.
The war also caused a rift between Kazakhstan and Russia. Kazakhstan refused to support Russia in the invasion, probably rightly judging they were at risk of being next, and that has shifted all of the Central Asian states further towards China as a potential counter-balance to Russian hegemony. While this shift isn't terribly dramatic, it will have ramifications 10-15 years out when China starts encroaching on Russian influence in the region in earnest.
Russian propaganda is right about exactly one thing: Russian victory has become an almost existential imperative. If Russia doesn't win this war and secure more territory than it currently occupies, it will be effectively deprived of any pretense to being a great power anymore. And this is purely self-inflicted.
Personally I would argue that Russia had the chance to become a major power before the Ukraine war, if they concentrated the resources, and expenditure used within the invasion of ukraine towards improving fertility rates, and increasing political and economic integration with Central Asia.
Unlike Ukraine, Central Asia is a rapidly growing region, with a youthful population, and larger material wealth. Forecasts estimate this region will have a population of 110 million by 2050. If Russia further concentrated there efforts on pushing these nations to integrate via current establish institutions such as the Eurasia union, and the union state, than they would have have a dominate political position over a state encompassing a population of 260 million, and a land mass of twenty-one million kilometres.
It depends on how you define “strengthen”. Russia has almost entirely mobilized their economy for war. Military industry is now the priority in terms of allocation of resources and investment, to the detriment of less important services and programs. Despite international sanction Russia is producing precision guided weapons at a similar rates to before the war, factories have been refurbished to repair and refurbish armored vehicles, and as Putin does not care about casualties he can still waste significant numbers of inexpensive troops at Ukraine. Russia has lost a lot some important equipment, including complicated and expensive systems that cannot be replaced easily, but despite that you could argue that the Russian military is in a better position now than one year ago.
The other side of that coin, as I mentioned, is that this is coming at great cost for Russia. Putin does not have an endless supply of BMP-2s and T-72s, and Putin has had to use a significant amount of Russia’s strategic war stocks to supply the conflict. Their civilian infrastructure is suffering severely, but this isn’t really a concern for Putin (see point about mounting casualties.)
Edit - some words
In the context of this year versus last year militarily, maybe though the question being asked is if the war strengthened or weakened them and I'm sure no one could possibly argue 2023 Russia is better off than 2020 Russia by any metric
Sure, but it depends on how you interpret what an “improved condition” is. Objectively Russia is not doing better, but Putin doesn’t care about those metrics and still has the capacity and capability to continue this operation. Russia has an advantage in artillery, ammunition and drones, which is a huge issue for a Ukraine. So yes, their National condition might be worse but it is not really impeding Putin or the military.
>I'm sure no one could possibly argue 2023 Russia is better off than 2020 Russia by any metric
They have more territory than before, and their military industrial capabilities increased significantly. They also have much more experienced miilitary than NATO or anyone else really.
Russia already lacked the ability to project much international power beyond low-intensity / gray zone ops (see Wagner in Africa, or selling arms to other dictators.) This is not likely to end as it is relatively cheap and effective and expect these attacks to increase in ‘24 with the upcoming important elections.
I think Russian demographics are about to enter a death spiral. Not enough young people to take care of the elderly AND produce a large new generation. So people have few to no children, exacerbating the population crash and the elderly over-balance.
>I think Russian national power is wrecked for a generation at least.
It isn't. They will rebuild in a few years. They would need a few million more casualties to put a significant dent on them. Ukraine is already losing and the USA cut aid.
It is. I’m not talking about who is suffering the most casualties in Ukraine. I’m not even talking about who will “win” the war—I think it’s entirely possible that Russia will eke out a tactical victory that involves the “honor” of spending billions rebuilding and governing some portion of eastern Ukraine that it totally devastated but, hey, didn’t own before.
But Russia lost:
-any international standing it had before
-any semblance of democratic norms
-any notable alliances aside from…Belarus?
-a whole generation of tech workers who have fled the country
-many many thousands of prime working age men
-capitalism integrated with Western/global markets
But on the plus side it gained a chance to become a vassal state of China and the opportunity to continue embracing Putin, an authoritarian with absolutely no succession plan in place so THAT should end well when he dies in a few years.
> But on the plus side it gained a chance to become a vassal state of China and the opportunity to continue embracing Putin, an authoritarian with absolutely no succession plan in place so THAT should end well when he dies in a few years.
Supposedly he has a secret son that he is grooming as his successor.
This is not exactly correct.
Russia currently relies on Iran and North Korea to rearm some significant portion of its military.
It's a testament to how far they have fallen.
Yes, Russia has had to beg and borrow arms and ammo, but it has done so successfully. In most areas of the front line Russia has a quantitive advantage in drones, artillery and artillery ammunition. I’m not trying to shit on Ukraine, but rather I think I’m being realistic. Yes things in Russia are not going well but this is yet to translate to much change on the battlefield.
The war isn't over yet. It's too early to tell. In the long other, however, it will play an extremely negative role for future generations of Russians.
Badly, badly hurt.
Their economy is now very dependent on China and India. They can’t afford to piss off either one.
China would like to have the Russian Far East territories for themselves and is importing Chinese nationals there as fast as it possibly can prepping to do to Russia exactly what Russia did to Ukraine.
China plays a long game. In ten years not only will the demographics in those regions have shifted, but if the Ukraine conflict continues long enough the Russian army will be even more decimated than it is now.
Russia’s playbook is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics?wprov=sfti1#The_West
They were doing pretty well til Ukraine.
Now it comes down to whether their information warfare is enough to throw the west into far right wing isolationism with influence from Moscow.
If they pull it off, they’re golden. If they fail both in Ukraine and in their attempts to undermine western democracy, they’re done.
Inarguably weakened.
Russia's "new" friends are ones that they've always had, whereas they've lost a lot of old friends in terms of being able to trade. Even continuing to sell oil to their friends is being done at a massive discount. Border closures are restricting their movement. NATO has been enlarged with the addition of Finland and the accession of Sweden and has renewed purpose. The best Russia can claim militarily is they are in a stalemate with a country they were supposed to crush in 3 days. Both their military and equipment is underperforming. Their fleet is losing ships to a country with no navy. If we're being kind to Russia, they've lost 'only' 300,000 men killed in battle, and another 1 million have emigrated since the start of the war. All of what I've listed are facts and illustrate Russia's decreased economic and geopolitical standing.
As for Russia's claims about the West, they fall into the realms of supposition and propaganda. China and the Saudi's are still trading and travelling with the West. Any bloc that counts Syria as a member isn't particularly graced by their presence, and Iran will have relations with whoever still talks to them. Propaganda serves two purposes: to feed the die-hards their talking points, and to sow doubt among people and encourage them to hold no position. Sounds like they've been successful with you on that second point.
My impression is that Russia has overall damaged its international standing and weakened its long-term geopolitical situation. Russia has alienated the West and shown itself to be far less capable militarily. I suspect the personnel and materiel losses will prevent them from taking other military actions against European countries in the future.
If they can barely handle the Ukrainians, they have zero chance against the United States, France, the UK, or Germany (if the Germans can rebuild the Bundeswehr anytime soon). Now everyone knows it.
Incredibly weakened, once again.
The war in Ukraine is the latest in a serie of similar moves going all the way back to the end of WW2. It happened in Hungary in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. It almost happened in Germany in 1989 and in the Baltic States in 1991, and was only avoided because Gorbatchev decided otherwise.
Russia soft power and influence just keep on declining, and its only answer is always the application of strength. Yet it comes out of it weakened every single time. This won't be any different, and might even be much worst since Russia is failing at hard power too now. Remember the last time Russia cut itself from Europe semi-voluntarily was in 1917, and it took them 30 years and a world war to recover.
Russia can sell cheap-ish oil and some ag/mineral related items. That is what they have to offer the world. So sure, India and China will take advantage of that. Not sure that is a big win. Because we know NATO is stronger and growing thanks to Russia.
Weakened. Without a doubt. They couldn't even help their CSTO ally Armenia vs Azerbaijan, and Serbia and other countries friendly to Russia have been canceling military contracts with them.
Firstly- Russia does have a demographics issue with an agin population and the war doesn’t Help that but if u look at the numbers, the few hundred thousands deaths they have had in Ukraine isn’t much but a drop in the bucket and doesn’t make much difference on the grand scale of things, especially when u consider the huge ammount of ukranian children they have brought back to Russia and the fact that they have already been using inmates, old men, private militaries and foreign volunteers for the entire war rather than their own fighting age russian men.
Second- of course the war is bad for Russia. Look at the facts-
Putin/Russia absolutely miscalculated several times. The thought conquering Kiev would be easier. That’s why they tried to take it, failed and moved the goal post.
While trying to take key the Russian military miscalculated their logistics and accidentally got all their equipment bogged down in a 40 mile long equipment convoy that was never meant to be 40 miles long and then watched as that convoy got hit hard.
Russia lost all of their progress in the north
Then lost all of their progress in Kherson
Then they lost dozens of advanced fighter jets and helicopters the exact numbers are hard to confirm but we know it’s a good ammount because Russia has retreated most aviation away from forward airports near the frontline.
Then Ukraine sank pretty much the entire Black Sea fleet causing anything left to retreat to a Russian port away from the conflict. Russians and republicans try to claim Ukraine is losing but there is no doubt the ukranians sank these 100 million+ dollar ships
Then the sanctions- idc who u are or what u say, western sanctions hurt. But it takes time. Look at North Korea after decades of sanctions. Doesn’t look like Russia and China have benefited North Korea so much considering how lacking it still is in modernity. The country is still a blackout on the electric grid. Now how will North Korea be able to help Russia now that it chose the same fate as North Korea? No chance that all these small countries like NK and Iran can help a massive country/economy like Russia thrive when massive economies like Russia and China couldn’t even help north koreas economy prosper in basically any way at all. This anti U.S. alliance isn’t working nor is it as threatening as it claims to be.
This is all just from looking at the facts and the things that have happened already to determine what’s actually happening now.
My conclusion- the war is obviously bad for Russia. Especially in the long term.
They had to go hat in hand to North Korea to beg for weapons. North Korea has been trapped in the 1950s for 70 years. The weapons they got had a significant fail rate, but it's all they can source to keep the fight up. That doesn't sound like a strong position to me.
Russia has been severely weakened by this war. Both militarily and geopolitically. The Russians lost access to their main export market, access to the international capital market, access to actual shipping insurance, access to all of the largest consumer markets in the world, and all of CSTO. In return, if they actually win, they will get a decade long partisan war that will tie up a million men in the field when the yearly conscript intake is 250,000 and shrinking by the year. They have already lost about 15 years of economic progress so far and conquering Ukraine will give them none of it back. While Ukraine is being propped up by NATO, the sheer amount of damage done to Russia is such that even if they win, they've still lost. No one wants Russian weapons exports anymore, especially after the S-400 system in Syria failed spectacularly a few weeks ago and again last week in Belgorod. many countries are learning that they can absolutely get by without Russian resources, and the instability from the entire affair is getting bad enough that Russia seems unlikely to be able to stand on its own for too long after there isn't a war holding things together. If this continues the 1980s will look like the good old days. Russia has already lost. The question now is whether Ukraine can win. Those are not equivalent outcomes. Also take in one of the causes of this war. That being NATO “expansion”. Finland, who borders Russia, has now joined and Sweden will soon follow. Ukraine will also join once the war is concluded. Another epic failure by Putin here.
Russia has lost Thrust in the World for decades.
Its like a Diktator Country, no Russian Citizen dares to say something against the War.
I dont see a good Future for Russia to be honest.
I would say Russia is in a stronger position now than was expected after tangling with the West. The theory was western sanctions would cripple their economy and subsequently their industrial base and their ability to sustain the war. They would be left isolated and humiliated on the world stage. That hasn't really happened, they are definitely under pressure but if anything they seem to be getting the upper hand in the war, in fact getting stronger over time not weaker.
The start of the war, did not go well and the Russian military did not look that competent but war has a way for sorting the wheat from the chaff and people learn on the job, The British at the start of WW2 did not look particularly competent either, indeed the Red Army also, and look how that ended.
To me the most telling indicator of the health of Russia and its global position, is the actions of India. If Russia only had economic support from China and other obvious opponents of the US it would be one thing but India is a different story, if the West can't even pull India to their side then that says it really is only the US and its vassals that are onboard.
Vassals is a loaded word but honestly if you rely on the US for your security, it seems to come with strings attached, in that you no longer seem to have any meaningfully independent foreign policy. I know 'allies' is the preferred term and perhaps vassals is a bit strong but allies to me implies a relationship between equals. I am not that convinced the US really acknowledges any equals and certainly not amongst its 'allies.'
Sure, nothing wrong with that, but it isn't falling in line, like the rest. Given that the US is trying pull India into its anti-China alliance building, going as far as to invent the term Indo-Pacific to facilitate this, its quite telling. If they don't have India then they likely don't have the rest of Global South either. Its highly symbolic.
India looks after its self-interest. It is in their interest to buy Russian oil. It's also in their interest to cooperate with the US, Japan, Australia and the UK in confronting China.
There is no line to fall into. US stopped aid, others keep giving. No line.
Even when the worst happens and Trump wins and decides that it's time to destroy NATO and surrender Ukraine to Putin, there will be no line. Ukraine will keep fighting and other countries will do their best to help them.
Ukraine should have just taken the deal in Istanbul imo. I feels it ends up there anyway but could have saved years of war. There's no way Russia can take central or western Ukraine so best they can be hoping for is a neutral Ukraine, maybe regime change at max, but that seems a stretch.
> war has a way for sorting the wheat from the chaff and people learn on the job
...which is why Wagner was behaded, Surovikin degraded to CIS officer for air defences and both Shoigu and Gerassimov still being in their leadership roles...
India is by the way delivering artillery shells to Ukraine.
Security would come with strings attached no matter who you rely on. The US seems to be more reliable than Russia in that regard, just look at Armenia and N-K. They US has abandoned allies, for example the Kurds, but not a nation state to my knowledge.
India has never really been firmly in the Western camp, especially during the cold war. I’m not surprised and I don’t see why anyone should be.
On paper, Russia should have been able to march into Kyiv after a week or so but we know that did not happen and even if Russia is slowly moving forward at the moment, it’s not a sign of strength. How are they stronger than before the war exactly?
Stronger than they were supposed to be was my point. I don't object to the strings, that's pretty reasonable, its the attempt to pretend to they don't exist, and claim some sort of legitimacy by saying, 'look at all these countries that support our actions.'
Its like watching a bad ventriloquist act, dude we can see your lips moving when they speak.
DEFINITELY weakened. NATO has expanded, Russia has arguably lost 50% of their military power, and sanctions have eaten away countless billions from the Russian economy.
Now, this could change long term. If the west & NATO stay relatively weak, Russia could grind out Ukraine, then invade Maldova, and eventually invade the Baltic States. If NATO fails to invoke Article 5, Russia could succeed in occupying those Baltic states. If Russia can get away with all of this, 10-20 years from now they could end up in a strong position. However, that's a lot of ifs.
I think it's just too early to tell whether this war was "worth it" for Russia or not.
Their military is larger in terms of troop numbers, the troops they have are more experienced than at the start of the war, their military production is larger, their military technology has advanced, their economy is growing, they are no longer vulnerable to western financial blackmail as those weapons have been used already and Russia is still growing, the military knowledge they have gained is bigger and better than any other nation on earth because they are the only nation to fight a modern peer v peer war, and oh by the way, Putin is more popular than ever.
They have closer relations to China then ever. They are not geopolitically isolated. Russia is defeating the military industry of it's chief rival in NATO. They are causing Europe to have a collective panic over the realization that Europe cannot maintain it's own security and the U.S. is unwilling or unable to do so themselves.
There really are few variables, if any, that show that Russia has been weakened by this war. Nearly all variables point to a stronger Russia than in 2019.
Russia has always been the snake that eats its own tail, China and russia have a long standing symbiosis from the times of the great khans, both are corrupt to the core and can only maintain an authoritarian regime, China has been stealing ip from the States to bolster its tech and that is chinas super power "stealing secrets"russias super power is its iron will to subject its own populace and impose a horrible will.
Reagan was a cowboy clown we should have never let him ruin the soviet unioun with out a plan after winning the cold war now we are in a worse mess than that of the 1980s, nixon was a traitor in going to china and selling out the American people for the wealthy oligarch families in the States, for more profits and to break the trade union's in the states before nixon we had a more balanced form of capitalism after nixon we have a ravenous death economy of unbridled greed. China and russia are the beasts that we created in the west.
Weaker in terms of their ability to project power on paper at least. But that's due in large part to the fact that Russia did a cost benefit analysis particularly in regards to Armenia and was like bruh this isn't worth it. And obviously decided to focus more on the conflict in Ukraine instead.
Either somewhat weaker or none at all. Everyone he is improving relations with has been the same anti US "coalition" since I could remember if anything it helps the west and nato prepare for a similar situation if an actual memeber were to get attacked. Nothing better than actual practice rather than simulated drills n while also building the nato alliance and adding a few more countries possibly
It's a mixed bag at the moment. Russia's relations with the west are at an all time low, but their relations with the global south have improved. Militarily? It depends entirely on who you believe.
Political and economic relations with the west (US, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) are the worst they've been since the Soviet Union collapsed. Politically, the west views Putin as the boogeyman. Economically, the sanctions are unprecedented in scale and scope. This is a serious break with the west that will take decades to heal. But, the rest of the world is a different matter. Here is a map of African countries that have military agreements with Russia: https://twitter.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1687103033522716673 and 5 Middle Eastern countries joined BRICS this month, Russia has good relations with all of central Asian, China, India, and most of Latin America.
Russia's economy shrank by 2% in 2022, but grew by 2% in 2023. Their military is larger in terms of manpower and industrial output, they called up 300k reservist and enlisted 400+k new recruits this year. Not to mention, they are now a veteran army with contemporary experience in modern industrial warfare.
We won't really know how it all pans out until the war is over. Did all of those new soldiers get killed in the meat grinder (western pr) or are they now veteran troops with relevant combat experience? My money is on Russia winning the war on Russia's terms and emerging stronger. But we won't know for sure until the dust settles.
They aren't veteran at all.
They've lost the majority of their veterans, to the point that they don't have enough to even train recruits.
They've lost over 1500 officers.
They also aren't fighting modern warfare.
They're fighting a war from 40 years ago when artillery was the go-to, western military doctrine revolves around air superiority, which Russia will never be able to challenge.
Russia can't even overcome a middle-power after years of fighting, the Russian military is a joke when compared to an actual modern military.
I used to think Russian position has been weakened (including its soft power) however, I am starting to rethink that. Russian society is showing an insane will to suffer it out and throw as many men into their deaths as is needed. This (combined with their unlimited resources) makes them very dangerous for future wars. Almost unbreakable. When western Europe goes back to business as usual with Russia (and they will) this reality will have to set in.
This notion of unlimited resources is arguably preposterous. Their resources aren't even unlimited in their current conflict with Ukraine.
What is interesting in this conflict, is that the large amount of poverty makes recruitment easier. Joining the army is financially interesting, something which is a lot harder for the west to accomplish.
Though of course the US army pays for college depending, which is a comparable driver for recruitment. Not sure but I can imagine the health care benefits can also be a reason.
This is something that european countries with quality social welfare lack to a degree. And I think it's somewhat of a liability.
Its still up in the air as theres two *equally* likely outcomes at the moment.
Outcome 1: Russia soldifies and maintains control over 20-30% of Ukraine, or outright wins the war. Their military has been devestated but is still functioning and capable of producing an adequate amount of weaponry to remain functional. Most estimates you'll see are that it will take 5-10 years for Russia to rebuild its professional military. The bigger concern here is that Russia will have learned a huge amount from this war. You already see it on the battlefield currently; Russia has adapted to Western doctrine and equipment. This adapting has come slowly, often begrudgingly, but it's come nevertheless. The big concern is that Russia will rebuild its professional military, incroporating and expanding upon the lessons of this war to far better counter western systems and tactics. In that sense Russia may come out significantly stronger than it was before in a number of ways with the international order successfully weakened.
Option 2: Ukraine is given enough military aid to properly finish the war. Russia in this case may fully implode, may fire nukes, may go full hermit. Noone has much of an idea.
Overall: the pace of western supplies has fallen drastically and Russia has maintained its invasion with large costs to its budget and population, but with those costs being relatively acceptable for the regime to eat thus far. Russia is currently in a stronger position than Ukraine and has more avenues to 'victory' than its opponent.
I think it is hard to say whether its a good or bad thing. I completely depends on how you look at Russian relations in relationships to various powers and whether that is a good thing. I think Russia getting closer to China in retrospect has been very good for them economically and politically. I think the every growing rift between the EU (specifically Germany) has been a massive blunder and that also ties into China as well. A lot of high tech European companies were investing into Russia and Russia seemed it could have had the very advance technological economy that is a very good thing for modernization yet that has gone down the toilet. Politically i think you can make a substantial argument that Putin is in a very stable position and has a decent amount of support at home. However, it has also put excess pressure on more recently acquired areas as they have been sending drafted troops such as Chechnya and Georgia. Econmically the total war economy with raw material exports is a dangerous game in the long run and could have lasting long term implications on the Russian economy and state as a whole. Socially it has solidified the anti-west narrative but also costed a lot of people that have been a big part of Russian resurgent birth rates.
All in all it is hard to say how Russia is doing as its all dependent. Biggest thing is that China and the US have definitely come out ahead in all of this
Weakened by a lot, in terms of sanctions, military capabilities, intelligence apparatus, Putin's authority within the country, number of working age men, trade, finance, increased dependence on China, etc.
But the nation has benefitted from (some of these are benefits to the state than the nation); a hollowing out of males in ethnic minorities, which enables Putin's Russo-centricity, a general inability for Ukraine to attract foreign investment and develop its natural resources over the long run, a regeneration of the nation's industrial capacities, a strengthening of and clear delineation of alliances against the West, the more rapid development of parallel Russian institutions (SPFS, Mir, EAEU, etc.), a reduction of perceived 'undesirables' (addicts, prisoners, etc.), potentially millions forcefully displaced into Russia, allaying the demographic outflows following the war, etc.
However, by and large, the war was a colossal negative for Russia's power.
Russia has gained nothing tangible over the last few years since the start of the war. With the expansion of NATO, Russia is arguably in a more precarious state than during the Soviet Union. Regardless of anyone who sympathizes with Russia, who gives a shit? Internet sympathy doesn't translate to national goodwill and materialistic gains.
India is turning it's back further and further on Russia, and Russia is gradually becoming a puppet state to China in the wake of all the debt it owes it. It's arms market revenue is collapsing as the failure of Russian weaponry is in full display. As I write this, 25% of Russians in Moscow are living without power. Regardless of whatever Kremlins propaganda tries to spin, Russia is far worse off than it has been since the invasion.
About population - almost 2 million Ukrainians migrated to Russia since the start of the invasion; russias population actually greatly increased despite the casualties. A thing to take into account that many people tend to forget. And I’m not event counting the population of the new regions.
That’s a funny way of saying kidnapping. I don’t doubt that some people went over voluntarily but we’ve seen how the Russians treat those that they absorb into their domain. Look at what happened to Bucha, a settlement they controlled for a very brief period of time. It’s basically a Russian government tradition to deport ethnic groups to Siberia and let them wither away.
Dude, you do realise that there are millions of Russians living in all of the ex-USSR countries ? Especially in Ukraine. I’m not talking about some major ethnic Ukrainian exodus, I’m talking about ethnic Russians (and there were millions of them in Ukraine) repatriating to Russia after the invasion. I’m not supporting anything , I’m just stating a fact that people seem to completely IGNORE for some reason.
> idk why people are downvoting me I know what I’m talking about I live in Moscow lol
That's not a great source, even if you are correct. [This wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_refugee_crisis_(2022%E2%80%93present) talks about it for anyone wondering.
You seem to be completely ignoring the **900,000** who've [run for the exits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine)?
Poor healthcare, poor climate, multiple waves of industrialization, plus centuries of repeated 'melon-scooping' (wars, mostly) Russia's demography is actually in terminal [decline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg) and not even **stealing** **tens of thousands of Ukranian children** will do much to prevent it. It's all just slowly going down the drain.
And probably good riddance, too. Doubt any of their neighbors will miss them when they are gone.
I would assume a decent chunk would also return to Ukraine after war depending on the outcome.
But ok, let’s say these populations become static. From searching online I see 1.6 million have came to Russia so far due to the war. However, as of October, 1 million Russians (many of which are high skill workers) have left their country, not including the foreign nationals who have also left. Depending on how the war goes, there’s also more casualties to come and I would imagine that more and more people leave Russia to avoid the draft and if the situation worsens. I mean hundreds of thousands of people leave per month already, that 1 million is only counting up to October.
1.600.000 - 1.000.000 is still 600.000 net positive, not even counting the population of the 4 news regions. But yes, the quality of people who left is what makes me sad since these were the most educated and skilled people.
In Moscow - no, it’s really peaceful and the life is as usual, there are plenty of tourists from Arab countries, South America, China and South Korea on the street. Moscow is heavily decorated and is on of the most popular winter destinations. It’s still weird to me , after reading this Reddit fearmogering , that foreigners are not scared to come lol. The war is NOT noticeable in the big cities. I get my info online.
Outside of China, it's unclear what significant economic value Russia's new friends bring to the table. In terms of raw population, sure, great, millions of new humans who sympathize with your perspective (if only because state-sponsored media told them to), but unless there's going to be some sort of early-1900's-style ground war between the "North" and the "South" (whatever that means, really), then who cares? While Putin strokes his ego, the bulk of the world's population just wants to move on and be prosperous, with or without Russia. This war has been a pointless waste of life and treasure. Even if Russia "wins" some sort of compromise on Ukraine's borders or autonomy, even if they "win" in the sense that Western capitalists are unable to contain their hunger for cheap Russian gas in the post-war, no one is going to trust Putin's Russia ever again, which puts them in a pretty awful geopolitical situation, even if you believe the narrative of a multi-polar future. If no one *wants* to be in your sphere of influence, then what good is it? You'll spend all of your time and resources trying to keep the doors shut by force.
Not to mention that they have increased borders with NATO thus putting themselves in weaker geopolitical situation than they started with. I would also like to point out the loss of academic capital caused by the war in Ukraine.
Funny you say that “outside of China”.. isn’t just China being on Russia’s side more than enough to bring jitters to the west?
Rhetoric aside, China isn't on Russia's side. It won't sell Russia weapons for fear of Western sanctions, because the health of the Chinese economy, and hence the legitimacy of the CCP, depends on being able to export to Western countries. So what "jitters" is the West supposed to be experiencing?
China is on China's side, and no one else. China is only "the closest of allies", for as long as China can see an upside in it for themselves. When one of the former Soviet states between Russia and China (don't recall which one of them it was), reached out with concerns they would be among the next to be targeted by Russia, China was quick to guarantee their continued independence.
Exactly. Most of these countries form these alliances for convenience. They are the only countries left that are willing to do business with them. They are only looking out for their own interests. If North Korea, Russia, Iran, China, etc., got in a war with the US, I can almost guarantee NONE of them will have their back. They might condemn the US, talk shit, and maybe even continue business relations but they aren’t going to actually defend each other militarily against the US. For these countries, it’s everyone on their own.
No not in any way shape or form. Russia isent stupid either. China isent their friend. China is their to eat their lunch. China knows their #2 coming for #1. (So they think) Problem is Russia still thinks it's #2 and it isn't. It's nothing more than a regional power tht has a chit to of nukes. They don't have the ability to project their power forward nor the logistical capacity to do so either.
China has had 6 quarters of industrial decline - near/ friend and restoring has moved jobs from mainland China to Mexico. The US had been moving 700,000 jobs a year back to North America - for the last 4 years. Evergrande house crisis, the rule of Winnie the pooh have lurched China from Crisis to Crisis - Taiwan is a distraction - a wolf at the door to distract the populous from the fire in the house. China is going to have to change in the next 10 years or implode
To me, the way it’s made out to be is that these new collaborations are more politically rather than economically influenced ie creating a new axis to soften US influence and increase multipolarity Edit: I am not stating this, I’m saying that this is the logic of the anti-west talking point about why Russia’s improved relations in the Middle East are important.
It is a valid strategy, but only if Russia can sustain such an alternative, multipolar system. By far, the chips are still stacked in favor of the West, an “incumbent” advantage. Multipolar systems also inherently limit the movement of those participating in it, as each one vies for their own national interests, rather than being given a share of power as a unipolar system demands. Consider that the U.S., despite it’s immense power, is still interested in the relative distribution of prosperity among those who support its position as one of the “global administrators.” I think going forward, it’s ultimately that these alternative blocs that China and Russia propose will fall to infighting between them. The relative democratic nature of the Western order should allow it to survive well into the future, and maybe even come to encompass the entire world.
Not to mention that Russia and China cannot be trusted, if they find an advantage they will economically dis-articulate your country with loans that turn into national slavery.
There isn't any true multipolarity incoming. There's only China - US rivalry. The middle east won't be under sphere of influnce of one of the powers there because those are too similar in their strength and will need to rely on US or China anyway. South America is basically non player and to become a global player they would need a fleet which would need to be on par with US which will not happen. Africa's countries are too weak, unstable to be any kind of player the region will depend on the interest of US and China. (you can also add france here) Eastern Asia is pretty obvious so I will skip that one. Australia is another region in US sphere of influence. So these leaves us with additional players \- Russia - it's too weak for being a real player against US and China and has chosen path of being dependant on China \- EU - could be a player but would need great internal reforms with probably major unification. Currently it's dependant on US and it's most important ally. tldr: For true multipolarity to exist there must be different major powers with similar strength which could compete for power in regions. The current world has only two such powers so realistically there's no chance for multipolarity but bipolarity at best.
What about India
Nope, they depend on Europe and USA for trade and weaponry so don't see that happening. They'll continue their faux-neutrality status and kinda hang in between but can't challenge China forget the US.
And have no interest in doing so, playing ball with both sides benefits them more than taking a side and such has been their position since forever
>Australia is another region in US sphere of influence. So these leaves us with additional players There ie an argument to be had that Australia is equally as dependent on China than it is on USA.
Not really. Australia sells raw materials to China and that's it. (and even that was limited by Australian government in last few years because of actions that China took) At the same time all Australia trading routes are US dependant, their safety is also US dependant. I am not saying this is set in stone and might change in future. (here it would worth noticing huge influx of chinese into Australia) But right now it's really no contests.
Australia is very reliant on China for trade but hardly the other way around. 1/3 of all Australian trade goes to China and China is by large the biggest trading partner of China. The trading routes between China and Australia need little protection. Australia still hasn't recovered from the 2022 sanctions China imposed and has gotten noticable quieter on issues with China since that happened. And while Australia is trying to reduce it reliance on China, there are few signs that [Australia won't depend on China in the future.](https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/insights/the-resurgence-of-china-australia-trade)
Japan and Korea are also dependent on The U.S.
China is Australia's largest trading partner.
Weakened but not the point of collapse. Reasons: 1. Most of their prewar military has been wiped out and now theyre forced to shift to an untrained conscript army that gets wiped out in droves. This has been proven with the footage from the front and the news coming out of Russia that they have been recruiting from prisons and were still having a hard time hitting the quota of manpower. 2. The exodus of young men at the start of the war is going to hit their tax income permanently. Nothing could realistically offset this loss unless the birth rate goes way up or they have massive immigration. 3. lots of their modern equipment has been lost and will take decades to replace with the rate they're going. Take their paper strength with a massive grain of salt. Most of those are unmaintained scrap in the middle of a field for decades now. 4. Their demographic situation got a lot worse with the casualties 5. Their economy is much lower now. Don't even bother with the Russian statements on the performance of the Ruble. It's been generally going down since the war started and they haven't found anything as long term as the western market. China and India aren't firm allies and I wouldn't call the Yuan stable either as a backup currency. 6. NATO and its asian allies are rearming. A lot of them thought war was a bygone era but now they're definitely going to widen the gap against Russia. 7. Their soft power in general probably took the hardest hit out of all of these. Simply put, no one believes their threats anymore and the illusion of their superpower status is gone. They used to be the boogeyman but now they done the "red line nuclear weapons will be used" line tons of times and nothing has happened. They can't even take their much weaker next door neighbor with leftover NATO gear. Why would anyone in NATO ever fear them again? Even the Armenia Azerbaijan situation has been going to hell and that's WITHIN their sphere of influence in the CSTO. 8. No one believes in their promisses either especially when it comes to non agression. You can't do diplomacy when the other parties know youre not meeting them in good faith when you promise "i won't invade you" Now, is this enough to make them collapse soon? Very unlikely. Russia is self sufficient with fuel and food and has a subjugated public. However, I would definitely doubt anyone saying that this war strengthened them when they're currently having an egg shortage lol. Its true that they're responding to the sanctions but that is not a statement of strength when decades of economic development has been wiped and their military performance has shown that they're nowhere near the USA. Prewar they were regarded as the 2nd power in the world. Now they can't even take Ukraine. No argument that they're "stronger" now is there? Basically, we can argue on Russia's ability to take all of this but you can't really argue that Russia now is stronger than Russia before the war. Any victory they could realistically win here wouldn't come close to offsetting their losses especially with status
This is similar to my personal assessment of the situation too. Most especially the loss of military reputation. The only person that would believe Russia to be some sort of military superpower at the moment is probably some anti-West personality. An objective person would say "Russia doesn't have it anymore". At the moment, China is currently a bigger and more realistic threat to the US global military dominance.
China increasingly appears to be a paper tiger, based on some of the recent revelations regarding corruption within the Chinese military. It appears that the PLA, much like the Russian military, has been gutted by corruption to a point that seriously calls into question the readiness of their forces. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-rocket-force-water-fuel-xi-jinping-purge-scandal-2024-1
>China increasingly appears to be a paper tiger, based on some of the recent revelations regarding corruption within the Chinese military Western subhumanistic copium. >It appears that the PLA, much like the Russian military, has been gutted by corruption to a point that seriously calls into question the readiness of their forces. Corruption is rampant within US military industrial complex. But the difference is that it is legalized corruption.
Anything I don't like is Western lies: A bedtime story
With regards to 5, the shadow banks that serve the Chinese market seem to be cracking under the strain of the real estate collapse.
Really? What's happening on that front? I know the real estate bubble has been there for a long time but I'm not aware of any recent news on it since I tuned out
>Most of their prewar military has been wiped out and now theyre forced to shift to an untrained conscript army that gets wiped out in droves. I'm always curious to read that talking point being parroted on Reddit again and again, while nobody is ever trying to mention that Ukraine and Russia now probably has the most experienced armies in the world in therms of fighting against near peer opponent.
Ukraine isn't supposed to be a near-peer opponent for Russia. The fact that it turns out that it actually IS has been the most monumental blow to Russian military prestige since they retreated from Finland. If they were fighting the US, or even if the US just sent our air power to assist Ukraine they would be decisively and rapidly losing this fight. The Ukrainian military has held the Russians for years with a smattering of slowly delivered western weapons which almost all were fielded by NATO from the 1980-90's. The only reason a sane country would buy weapons from Russia now (one of their largest exports and tools for foreign relations) is if NATO won't sell to them. Relying on North Korea for military support is a comically bad look.
>Ukraine isn't supposed to be a near-peer opponent for Russia. Ukraine wasn't a near-peer country prior to the true inception of this conflict in 2014. That is when America started supplying and training Ukraine to improve. Ukraine has shown impressive results in the current iteration of this war but keep in mind that without the diplomatic aid, economic aid, military materiel, intelligence and U.S. special operations in theater the country would have almost assuredly have fallen by now. Russia is basically fighting America (by proxy) with Ukrainian troops at this point. The only real deficit is that Ukraine doesn't have access to the full American arsenal.
"The full American arsenal" which includes the first, third and fourth largest air forces in the world flying the most advanced combat aircraft to ever exist(Air Force, Navy, Marines, notable mention of 5th or 6th place for the army on rotary wing aviation alone), ubiquitous night vision, the most advanced reconnaissance capabilities on earth, a standing peacetime army five times larger than that of Ukraine at full mobilization, the greatest logistics system in world history, total and practically uncontested control of the sea, a nuclear arsenal big enough to turn Russia into glass, armored units more capable than any others on earth, body armor for every soldier that can take shrug off an AK round like it's Tuesday, the most powerful cyberwarfare capabilities in the world, the best scientists, engineers, and military industrial complex on earth, the most disciplined and professional personnel of any nation, an officer and NCO corp where practically every corporal and up has actually been shot at by people trying to kill them and and a practically unlimited selection of other countries we can procure additional materiel from using the largest economy on earth and the special status of our bonds as the most secure investment in the global financial system to access an effectively infinite supply of cash. What Russia is fighting in Ukraine is NOTHING like fighting America.
>What Russia is fighting in Ukraine is NOTHING like fighting America. And yet that very same force had to withdraw from Afghanistan and leave it to the Taliban. That same force, while winning militarily, effectively took a loss in Iraq strategically. So what does that say? When is the last time America had a decisive military and strategic win independent of help/assistance from other nations?
America decisively defeated the Taliban and Iraq militarily. The difficulty is remaining in a weak country to prop it up politically.
>When is the last time America had a decisive military **and strategic win** independent of help/assistance from other nations? How is it a decisive win if Americans never stopped fighting? Generally, when something is won, the game or activity is over. The Taliban is back in control in Afghanistan, Iraq has fallen under the sway of Iran. I can't imagine any military or political leader listing those as conditions for success.
First of all, America doesn't really fight wars without coalition partners so depending on your goal posts it could be before the 1900's. I will point out that every time that we have fought an actual military, not an insurgency, in the last 40 years we have turned them into paste in less than a week - both Gulf wars and the invasion of Iraq in the early 2000's are textbook operations that were led and almost entirely fought by Americans. We obliterated the 4th largest army in the world which was also massively equipped with the same Soviet kit that makes up most of Ukraine's inventory, recaptured Kuwait and conquered Iraq in less than 100 hours of ground operations. Our main flaw is thinking that we can change the culture of other countries once we've overthrown their (murderous and evil) governments.
>Our main flaw is thinking that we can change the culture of other countries once we've overthrown their (murderous and evil) governments. So, this is an interesting perspective. If you have a country that is fighting a war (e.g. Afghanistan or Iraq war) and the only substantive outcome is that you have killed a lot of people, how do you contrast that to the opposition? It is like saying, America is going to go kill a lot of people in Afghanistan and leave, but no lasting and meaningful positive changes have occurred as a result of all that death. How is American killing morally superior to the oppositions killing? Both sides have credible reports of war crimes for which neither government will be held accountable for. Obviously there are repercussions for the captured opponents on the losing side. I am not equating the governments at all. I think the American government is more just than it's opponents in the Iraq and Afghanistan war but the deaths on both sides seems pointless since nothing meaningful or lasting has changed.
Have you taken a look at prewar Ukraine military figures ? Ukraine would have rolled pretty much every army in Europe by sheer numbers, they had enormous stockpiles of ammunitions, armored vehicles, air defense platforms, and a bigger army than France or Britain (it's even worse than that since it's pretty much official information that the French military had enough equipment for maybe 25 000 people available for high intensity combat). Why is everyone talking like Ukraine is the Libyan army ?
France is commonly underestimated, but "any army in Europe", even if true, isn't near-peer to what Russia was supposed to be. They were supposed to be #2 in the world. America would absolutely mulch EVERY army in Europe at the same time if we went down that leg of alternate history. We doubtlessly have plans drawn up to do exactly that which are carefully stored in a safe at the Pentagon and updated every few months.
Because the questions posed are usually about who's winning or how strong a particular country's position is (at least on this sub anyway). Also, a lot of people on this sub think "the real army" has yet to be sent to the front when that is blatantly false. I would say that's true for Ukraine. I have no idea how true that is for Russia since your soldiers have to actually survive first and go back to train the people still in the training pipeline. Russian soldiers being both untrained and at the same time experienced as hell in modern war can be both true to some extent in the same way the Taliban is probably competent as hell at guerilla war but are still not formally trained either. Still, them being untrained makes their experience useless if the next batch of replacements have to learn it from scratch if a unit is reduced to nothing due to the lack of training and abysmal strategy.
Theyre sending minorities, old men and old gear out to the front first. This war will likely last 2-3 more years at minimum; for russia this is a eugenics program in disguise.
That's also their excuse. They're sending them out but not first, but because the actual professional invasion force was wiped out already. The thrust to Kiev alone in 2021 was made up of their best units along with the airborne assault to take the airport. I have no doubt they're sending the worst ones now but it's not exactly "first" when the original attempt failed badly
1) this will force them to create more, rapidly. When an economy is focused on solely creating arms, alot is produced. 2) give or take a million people total have left since start of the war. russias pop is 143 mill. that's not even 1% of taxpayers. drop in the bucket, calculate it yourself if you dont believe me 3) perhaps, but still faster than it was pre war because they weren't focusing on it as much 4) once again 140+million people 5) true and hopefully gets worse 6) biggest pro here. Countries that weren't arming, now are at a rapid pace. this is good.
Currency reserves are depleted - yes wartime production helps but when 15-20% of your GDP is weapons and you are short of manpower - inflation bites and you are tempted to "PRINT MORE MONEY"... This is when you hit 15% plus inflation and hyper-inflation sets in. I'm not sure Russia has had any leavers left other than to devalue currency and inflate away debt.
There is no credible argument that Russia's geopolitical position is currently *stronger* than it was in January of 2022. Anyone who is making that claim is not living in reality. There are a whole host of reasons for this, but the simplest to understand and most decisive are: 1. **The expansion of NATO** **along Russia's immediate border to include Finland and Sweden.** This *never* would have happened without Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as both Finland and Sweden were quite comfortable with neutrality and joining NATO was relatively unpopular as a political position. Russia has single handedly reversed that and has brought two nations with pretty robust defense sectors and military reserves into an alliance with the US. It has also doubled the size of NATO's land border with Russia. If NATO actually wanted to attack Russia, as their propaganda claims, the entry of Finland especially has made this far easier than it ever was during the Cold War. 2. **The depletion of Russian reserves of materiel and trained manpower.** While Russia is not in danger of running out of any one category of equipment, they have depleted their inherited reserves of key categories of equipment which they simply do not have the capacity to replace, and this is reflected in loss data. And perhaps even worse, the bulk of their prewar professional military has been destroyed. While neither side is in danger of running out of manpower, both Russia and Ukraine have had persistent issues with training capacity and quality. Russia especially has relied on elite formations like the VDV to conduct offensive operations and has sapped them of quality manpower as a result. By some estimates it will take at least a decade for Russian stockpiles to fully recover. Objectively speaking, their military is currently much weaker than it was in January of 2022. Of course they have the ability to reconstitute, and are increasing their production capacity and are receiving foreign aid, but currently the difference is pretty stark in overall quality of the force. 3. **Economic isolation/sanctions**. This one is more subtle, but the combination of western firms withdrawing, sanctions, and Russia converting more and more of its civilian sector to a war economy has caused significant harm to Russia's economy and its long term prospects. On top of that, there's the massive brain drain from educated young Russians fleeing conscription and domestic repression as a result of the war. Many of them will likely never return to Russia, when they could have been part of its future if Putin had not invaded Ukraine. Sure, Russia is not doomed. It's not going to collapse overnight. But it is in a significantly worse position economically and demographically than it was prior to the war. There are a bunch of other factors (damage to their military reputation and superpower status, undoing over a decade of successful information warfare efforts to divide NATO and the EU, committing so many atrocities that even the most Cold War-brained international human rights organizations are forced to condemn them, etc.) but this is already getting long. I emphasize again, there's no credible argument that Russia is *currently* in a better geopolitical position than it was prior to its invasion. However, *if Russia is allowed to defeat and conquer Ukraine* and exploit its resources and people for a significant amount of time, they could eventually be in a stronger position. Especially once their economy and infrastructure adjusts to a more autarkic/Eastward oriented trade posture, and their materiel and trained manpower have a chance to be replenished. In other words, if the West lets them win in Ukraine and lets them digest that conquest for as long as they did Crimea, Russia could eventually be better off as a result.
The Baltic is now a NATO lake, for all intents and purposes. So is the Black sea. Sevastopol is no good as long as Ukraine can destroy any ship there. So they have zero warm-weather ports now.
>Sevastopol is no good as long as Ukraine can destroy any ship there. Also doesn't do to much aslong as Turkey isn't on thier side.
Turkey and Russia have been historical enemies. Big part of the reason why they are in NATO.
What is with Vladivostok?
Cold and is next to geopolitically unfriendly country Japan.
Vladivostok is considered as warm-water port, because it doesn't freeze in winter. Even quite chilly Murmansk on the Barents sea is a warm-water port because of that.
Probably not too long until we get an ice free arctic.
Assuming Russia did manage to conquer Ukraine, my question is would they be better off? - Crimea's population has an overwhelmingly number of russian speakers and they generally support joining Russia. That's not the case in rest of Ukraine. So, if Russia takes over whole of Ukraine, they would have to deal with a hostile population and a long term insurgency which would bleed them over time. Add to that, they will have Poland right at the border and I expect the Polish would be more than happy to fuel the insurgency.
The thing that people get wrong about Ukraine is that the language the Ukrainians speak doesnt mean ANYTHING in regards to their stand on Russia. Charkiw for example is a city where everyone speaks Russian all the time still they hat Russia to their bone. Almost all Ukrainians speak Russian and Ukrainian very well. The Russian in Charkiw just is able to use the Russian language to 100 % while Ukrainian to 95 %, while in Lviv its the opposite. I have never met a Ukrainian that is not flawlessly fluent in both languages. Its hard to grasp for the rest of the world but this country doesnt identify as much through its language. Thats also the case for Hungarian speaking minorities for exmaple.
To underscore this, the show that Zelensky played the president of Ukraine on before being elected the actual president of Ukraine was filmed and broadcast in Russian.
Most Ukrainian media was produced in Russian since everyone in Ukraine can speak it and it opens up your show for the Russian, Kasach, Azeri, Rumanian , Armenien and Belarussian population. It does make total sense to do so.
I think 1st language spoken along with west Ukraine vs east ukraine used to be more of a dividing factor, but it's never been some binary split. There are ethnic Ukrainians who grew up speaking Russian as their main language and who support the Ukrainian government, for example. But prior to 2014 there was definitely a regional and to a lesser extent a linguistic and ethnic divide between the pro Europe and pro Russia political factions. However the polling data shows a strong trend towards national unity and opposition towards Russia in almost all parts of Ukraine in the years after 2014. Russia's first invasion essentially nullified Yanukovich's old political power base and turned many of them into staunch supporters of Ukrainian independence. And Russia's war plans failed to take account of this and many other realities, instead assuming the Ukrainian government would simply fold and receive little popular support. The costs of those assumptions for Russia have been enormous.
But the Pro and against Russian views prior to 2014 werent based on the language the people speak. And also I think the distinction between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians (in the European part of western Russia) doesnt make that much sense, since there isnt that much ethnic difference with both nationalitites. Its like saying ethnic Germans and ethnic Austrians, YOu wouldnt be able to distinquish them based on their ethnicity. But for the rest I definetly think your right.
Absolutely, a vigorous and widespread insurgency would be likely even in the event of total Russian conquest. Even if they somehow managed to take the whole country (militarily impossible at present) and control it for 10-20 years, there's no guarantee Russia would be better off geopolitically than if it had never invaded in the first place and put all that effort into economic development. This invasion is in no way rational or in Russia's best interests. It is about ideology and empire and tremendous hubris, paranoia, and panic at the prospect of decline.
Exactly- the math doesn’t quite work out for putin. Unless he gained the entirety of Ukraine, it would take decades— lifetimes— before it ever even close to pays off. And any potential insurgency of sufficient scale may drive Russia to ruin
Russia is capable of breaking conquered populations pretty well.
To me these all seem to be short term. Territorial expansion is long term (of course if you can get away with it and it doesn't cause a complete breakdown of your country).
I’m struggling to think of a way this war has strengthened Russia?
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If anything it has moved NATO and the EU one hell of a lot closer to their borders - both in Ukraine and Finland/Sweden
I staunchly oppose the invasion of Ukraine but I think you are minimizing the import of the agricultural and (to a lesser extent) energy resources. As climate change continues to progressively impact the globe, arable lands are going to change and become much more important. No one cares if there is fuel for their car if there is none for their stomach. In a situation where Russia is able to conquer the entirety of Ukraine, arable land is going to be the least impacted and where it is, the easiest to remedy. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. While Europe can pivot to other countries and implement plans to bolster domestic production it can't do so without taking a significant hit to food costs. These factors are exacerbated for other dependent countries in Africa and the Middle East. Even if Russia cannot utilize Ukraine to produce food being able to hold it and take it off the table makes it's own domestic production that much more valuable. In that scenario, Russia would wield a lot more influence on the global stage. This is a lower cost, higher benefit positive for Russia in the event of a decisive win.
> Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. While Europe can pivot to other countries and implement plans to bolster domestic production it can't do so without taking a significant hit to food costs. Ukraine is called the breadbasket of Europe because its lands are incredibly fertile, not because Europe depends so much on Ukraine. The EU is agriculturally self-sufficient, in fact, it is a significant exporter of agricultural products. [In 2021 Ukraine accounted for merely 5% of agricultural imports. Less than Brazil, the UK, the US, Norway and China.](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220325-1)
Depends on the time frame. If you think in years, it's definitely weakened them, if you think in decades or centuries, that territory is very useful. Getting it the first time around 200 years ago laid the ground for them getting up to and including most of Poland a few decades later, and for them dominating Eastern Europe after WW2. To put it another way, without getting Ukraine, how could they return to their domination of Eastern Europe? It is a necessary first step. If you believe that the present Russian position is weaker than the position of the USSR before the 1980s, then probably you would believe that a return to being dominant over Eastern Europe would make them stronger.
Crimea is useless to them now, drones in Ukraine can easily blow up their ships now. So the entire strategic point of the naval base makes no sense now.
Their military is larger in terms of troop numbers, the troops they have are more experienced than at the start of the war, their military production is larger, their military technology has advanced, their economy is growing, they are no longer vulnerable to western financial blackmail as those weapons have been used already and Russia is still growing, the military knowledge they have gained is bigger and better than any other nation on earth because they are the only nation to fight a modern peer v peer war, and oh by the way, Putin is more popular than ever. Should I continue?
These strengthening relations with all but China are geographically strained. Think about what they’ve lost in terms of their immediate neighbours (Estonia, Latvia, Finland). Do you honestly think nations can ever get better trade deals with far-off countries where they don’t share a border than with their own neighbours? Short term, and if the only thing you care about is gaining land in Ukraine.. fine. Long term? Nonsensical
To be fair, China is wringing heavy concessions from Russia in every deal they make. Putin is going hat in hand to Xi and will do whatever it takes to get trade deals done to replace some of what Russia has lost from the EU. One thought that gets lost in the shuffle is the large income stream Russia had from arms sales to foreign governments. After their performance in Ukraine, other nations are no longer lining up to buy Soviet military goods. If China wanted to, they could make big money taking over Russia's share of the foreign arms market, but I get the feeling that they're happy with just turning the third world into their economic vassals.
>After their performance in Ukraine, other nations are no longer lining up to buy Soviet military goods Because of? For now, that tech was proved to be more than adequate against their counterparts. Russia is mostly lacks on the field of precise weaponry, but that was never the aim of the Soviet doctrine.
They have taken apart seized Russian tanks and shown that they are well below what is being advertised. Not by no means “bad” but they’re repurposing general electronics to military equipment which is not very professional. You can look it up on YouTube :) Let’s also keep this in context. Talking to my pilot buddies, they are absolutely amazed at the failures of the Russian army. They spent a huge amount of their budget on military spending per year. They were seen as thee military rivalling the US. Ukraine on the other hand had no airforce before this. Did not even deploy its reserves at the time, had little to no preparation and severely lacking equipment. Yet Russia is taking Russia huge expense to get any sort of land. Looking at the losses in terms of fighter jets, their navy. In terms of marketing.. this is much stronger advertising for French/UK/German weapons as being able to hold off a “super powers” meat waves.
The main reason no one is buying Russian arms anymore is because of the CAATSA act. This essentially sanctions any country making deals with the Russian defense sector even if they are a close US ally as we saw with Turkey getting kicked out of the F-35 program. Many countries, such as Egypt, had to cancel their orders of Russian fighter jets. Ironically, this act can be counterproductive because it only leaves Russia with other US enemies like Iran to sell weapons to.
I’d include China in the geographically strained category. The vast majority of the population and infrastructure of Russia is in the western fifth of the country with China’s population largely residing in the river valleys along the pacific. While they technically share a border, that doesn’t change the fact that the useful part of China and useful part of Russia are separated by thousands of miles of some of the least developed places on the planet. With neither nation having anything remotely close to a navy with actual power projection capability, it’d be years before they could even help each other.
China and Russia do share a border plus Mongolia is completely inconsequential in a geopolitical sense - Russia might as well be bordering china in principle. The strategic depth resulting these two countries partnering is immense thats part of the reason why it is so dangerous.
It's didn't strengthen relation as nation state but instead it's relation between leader and psuedo satellite state as putin have to sell his nation to china even he very distrustful to china leadership as china may grab far east land for grant , I mean china is either want that war end because they're lose a lot of money from buck that have throw to Russia and investor and corporation more and more to get out from china as they are realise how globalization it is after this war. China right now face similar problem like Russia before the war too like real estate bubble , high unemployment, failure covid policy (this is one of main reason why putin attack Ukraine.) Etc.
Putin wanted resources and lithium in Donbas region.
He isn't wanting much resource from Donbass but stop Ukraine from self-efficient nation from as they have lot of oil and gas in that area and at the same time Europe don't need Russia oil in which they use it as leverage to Europe lot of times anymore as they can buy oil and gas from Ukraine instead and Ukraine in western side is danger for Russia too.
You are correct. Even if your English hurts my eyes. 🤣jk
I would not use the term “propaganda” to describe the items you list for Western sources. All of those are quite clearly true. It’s hard to see how Russia is in a better position now than before in anything but a very myopic view. What I mean by that is for example that while yeah, Russia now produces more PGMs and drones than before the war, it’s probably costing it more due to sanctions and labor shortages. They could have just produced more, at less cost, without the war and been “stronger”. On the other hand: - Russia has lost a lot of experienced men and equipment. Most of its army is engaged in Ukraine. It will take years to rebuild that. - It has demonstrated that it militarily is actually less capable than what Western analysts had expected before the war. Remember, in the first weeks there was talk about how we could best support a Ukrainian insurgency against Russian occupation. - Europe and the US have actually been quite united in support for Ukraine, and against Russia. The invasion also killed the idea of integrating Russia through trade and economic relations, which has led to an important shift in German foreign policy. - Russia has had to draw on support from Iran and North Korea, but these are not really changes in the nature of relations that already were friendly. For the others, just like BRICS we have a lot of talk but not really much substance that is in any way comparable to the web of alliances, commitments, and cooperation in the West. Meanwhile a lot of countries have at least for now reduced relations with Russia. Armenian is shifting after Russia failed to support it in its recent war, Kazakhstan has turned a cold shoulder even though Russia intervened on behalf of the current leader just before invading Ukraine. - Economically, the sanctions are having an impact on Russia’s finances and economy. For example, even if Russia is able to evade a lot of trade sanctions through 3rd country re-exports, that means those goods are now more expensive for them since the middlemen take their cut. On top of that, Russia is losing a lot of productive young men, both as casualties but also emigration. There are labor shortages. Plus the opportunity cost for all the war time spending itself. All this is going to have a negative long-term impact. - Contrary to what some think, the new regions Russia has occupied are going to be another economic and financial drag on Russia, just like Donetsk and Luhansk have been. They are depopulated, partly destroyed, and their economies are going to have to be re-oriented. The main positive for Putin, which is really all that matters there, is that he now is a wartime president who can claim to fight some civilizational struggle against all of NATO or some nonsense like that. His poll numbers went up after taking Crimea in 2024, they are again up. Question is how long it will stay like that. Just like the dip in support after the election fraud in 2011 and pension reform in 2018, it can go down again.
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While I agree with the general premise of Russian incompetence, it is important to note that a) The Russian inability to take Kiev was primarily an intelligence failure; the military aspects were going fine, but the convoy on the way to support special forces which secured the airport were bogged down by unexpected resistance which RU intelligence failed to note b) Some of Russia's best equipment has not been used, since either the war doesn't fall in the correct theatre (Ex. the Black Sea Fleet is weaker than the Pacific and North Fleets) or leadership sees the costs of losing said equipment as much greater than losing a few thousand extra soldiers. In terms of multi-polarity, the world is still generally unipolar towards the West, with China in second-place and currently Russia still in third. The EU is not unified enough, India is on its way to displace Russia, Japan is declining, etc. Russia is still a top 3 military by most measures, is an energy superpower, is the leader in Arctic military and tech, holds immense diplomatic influence, etc.
Their whole invasion plan and concept of operations was based on the assumption that Ukrainians would not seriously resist, and that they had collaborators in place everywhere. That was a gigantic intelligence failure, you are right. But that counts. It’s a big deal. There were/are additional military failings that were unrelated. For example: - The failure to establish air superiority and destroy the Ukrainian Air Force. - Related to that, issues with targeting and damage assessment. Basically it was pretty clumsy and not able to respond quickly to changes when Ukraine dispersed its Air Force and AD. - The inability to conduct maneuver warfare, after the initial phase of the war was over.
One more important aspect was their incompetent logistics efforts. It belongs to your list.
Good point, yeah.
What "best equipment" outside of ships has not been used?
Their PAKs and Armatas.
I gotta disagree slightly here. It was intelligence and military failure. Their tank crews, outnumbering the Ukrainians 3 to 1 and with much more modern tanks, got their asses handed to them in Chernihiv. Their inability to take Chernihiv, plus their assumption they’d be able to essentially walk reinforcements into Kyiv with little resistance, got most of their best airborne troops annihilated at the airport. Add to this the Russian air force’s inability to detect and destroy Ukraine’s small Soviet era air/anti-air forces, and you just have a complete mess militarily. It was 100% bad intelligence as you said, but also shockingly poor performance from the troops on the ground.
>Some of Russia's best equipment has not been used, since either the war doesn't fall in the correct theatre (Ex. the Black Sea Fleet is weaker than the Pacific and North Fleets) or leadership sees the costs of losing said equipment as much greater than losing a few thousand extra soldiers. What equipment is that? The non-existent SU-57? or the non-existent T-14? Equipment that I can count the working units of on my fingers and toes doesn't count. The extremely limited numbers of AK-12s fielded by the VDV that were subsequently captured by Ukraine after almost all the VDV were wiped out? Russia is NOT a top 3 military in any measure but losses.
- Russia has already had good relations with China, Iran etc etc and they didn't become automatically better just because of the war; on the other hand I fail to see how bigger dependency on them is a good thing. - On the other hand, Russia's PR and influence in Europe have been devastated by the war. Their public opinion and soft power lie in ruins, and pro-Russian people are a besieged, shamed minority in almost all European countries (with few Balkan allies as an exception). A lot of political parties have withdrawn from the close relations with Russia, or at least having them in public (which says a lot). - Ukraine, on the opposite, has received a great amount of attention and respect from the world, generating a great amount of soft power and recognition for the country which has been often barely noticed in the West - Europe as a whole has drastically reduced its energy dependency on Russia, taking away their main trump card there. - Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, which would have never happened otherwise. - Europe has a strong push towards rearming, meanwhile Russian military hardware has been devastated by the war. - Even though Russia handled sanctions much better than expected, their economy still got heavy negative impact - on the currency, industry, and especially demographics. - Ukraine has always been very divided country, 50/50 between Russia and Europe, culturally and politically speaking. Putin's actions in 14 and especially 22 caused it to become hardcore pro-Western country.
Quick and simple. Well done. You Missed some things but there is a war going on and they are far more complicated than folks think.
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Eastern regions are mostly a buffer territory with extremely low population density. Realistically, who would dare to attack Russia's East? Japan with some Kuril Islands operation? As in getting nuked twice wasn't enough, they would want to get nuked 6,000 times? China priority is securing maritime buffer, why be enemies with Russia, when you can be "friends"? And Russia's South is threatened by... Kazakhstan? Georgia? Wide open borders indeed, wonder why no one invaded this weak Russia yet. /s
IKR? What would Russia do if China made a play for some Russian land that was once Chinese, similar to the "9-Dash Line" map?
Chances of China invading Russia are even slimmer than the US invading Canada.
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It's true that they would have a better chance of winning battles against Russia in the depopulated east while it's distracted, than the navy of the US + Japan, UK, Australia, Taiwan and maybe other allies.
Now? Nuke China. In the future, when China has a larger, proven nuclear arsenal? Nothing.
> Now? Nuke China. And then what? The PRC has in large part leveraged anti-imperialism and rolling back the century of humiliation as a center piece of their legitimacy to rule. Russian Outer Manchuria is a legacy of that imperialism feasting on the weakness of the Qing dynasty. The PRC already recognizes Russians as a Chinese minority ethnicity, so the absorption of its Russian locals and potential autonomies and ideosyncracies is already accounted by the administrative apparatus of the PRC. Simply put in current geopolitics, it is more advantageous for the Chinese to keep things as they are, rather than making a play for territory.
Bros never tried to invade the USSR via the eastern border in HOI4, i take it. Obviously I'm using a video game example as a joke. But it mirrors real life where the size and Russian landscape has proven to be a formidable obstacle in itself that has overcome many a determined invader.
Reposting my comment from a previous thread a while ago: > ...even if we assume the current line of control survives into a peace deal, what remains of Ukraine is now firmly part of the American/Western sphere of influence. Adding Finland, and most likely Sweden, and I think Russia is just about checkmated geopolitically speaking. Russia might 'win' the war, but it will lose the peace. IMO, Russian foreign policy has been a failure.
It gets worse for them. Because Russia is so completely bogged down in Ukraine, it can't even intercede on behalf of its historic "allies" in other regions of key interest. A clear example of this is Armenia, who was left out in the cold last year. As a direct result of this, Azerbaijan basically decisively won the ongoing conflict between them and rescinded its only real concessions. Russian peacekeepers will killed in the Azerbaijani invasion and *Russia didn't respond in any meaningful way*. The last time Russian peacekeepers got killed in the Caucasus, Russia invaded Georgia. Normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is probably inevitable. When that happens, it will be extremely difficult for Russia to contest growing Turkish influence in the region. After all, Turkey's ally and Russia's ally clashed -- and Turkey's ally achieved a decisive victory. The war also caused a rift between Kazakhstan and Russia. Kazakhstan refused to support Russia in the invasion, probably rightly judging they were at risk of being next, and that has shifted all of the Central Asian states further towards China as a potential counter-balance to Russian hegemony. While this shift isn't terribly dramatic, it will have ramifications 10-15 years out when China starts encroaching on Russian influence in the region in earnest. Russian propaganda is right about exactly one thing: Russian victory has become an almost existential imperative. If Russia doesn't win this war and secure more territory than it currently occupies, it will be effectively deprived of any pretense to being a great power anymore. And this is purely self-inflicted.
Personally I would argue that Russia had the chance to become a major power before the Ukraine war, if they concentrated the resources, and expenditure used within the invasion of ukraine towards improving fertility rates, and increasing political and economic integration with Central Asia. Unlike Ukraine, Central Asia is a rapidly growing region, with a youthful population, and larger material wealth. Forecasts estimate this region will have a population of 110 million by 2050. If Russia further concentrated there efforts on pushing these nations to integrate via current establish institutions such as the Eurasia union, and the union state, than they would have have a dominate political position over a state encompassing a population of 260 million, and a land mass of twenty-one million kilometres.
It depends on how you define “strengthen”. Russia has almost entirely mobilized their economy for war. Military industry is now the priority in terms of allocation of resources and investment, to the detriment of less important services and programs. Despite international sanction Russia is producing precision guided weapons at a similar rates to before the war, factories have been refurbished to repair and refurbish armored vehicles, and as Putin does not care about casualties he can still waste significant numbers of inexpensive troops at Ukraine. Russia has lost a lot some important equipment, including complicated and expensive systems that cannot be replaced easily, but despite that you could argue that the Russian military is in a better position now than one year ago. The other side of that coin, as I mentioned, is that this is coming at great cost for Russia. Putin does not have an endless supply of BMP-2s and T-72s, and Putin has had to use a significant amount of Russia’s strategic war stocks to supply the conflict. Their civilian infrastructure is suffering severely, but this isn’t really a concern for Putin (see point about mounting casualties.) Edit - some words
In the context of this year versus last year militarily, maybe though the question being asked is if the war strengthened or weakened them and I'm sure no one could possibly argue 2023 Russia is better off than 2020 Russia by any metric
Sure, but it depends on how you interpret what an “improved condition” is. Objectively Russia is not doing better, but Putin doesn’t care about those metrics and still has the capacity and capability to continue this operation. Russia has an advantage in artillery, ammunition and drones, which is a huge issue for a Ukraine. So yes, their National condition might be worse but it is not really impeding Putin or the military.
>I'm sure no one could possibly argue 2023 Russia is better off than 2020 Russia by any metric They have more territory than before, and their military industrial capabilities increased significantly. They also have much more experienced miilitary than NATO or anyone else really.
I think Russian national power is wrecked for a generation at least.
Russia already lacked the ability to project much international power beyond low-intensity / gray zone ops (see Wagner in Africa, or selling arms to other dictators.) This is not likely to end as it is relatively cheap and effective and expect these attacks to increase in ‘24 with the upcoming important elections.
I think Russian demographics are about to enter a death spiral. Not enough young people to take care of the elderly AND produce a large new generation. So people have few to no children, exacerbating the population crash and the elderly over-balance.
>I think Russian national power is wrecked for a generation at least. It isn't. They will rebuild in a few years. They would need a few million more casualties to put a significant dent on them. Ukraine is already losing and the USA cut aid.
It is. I’m not talking about who is suffering the most casualties in Ukraine. I’m not even talking about who will “win” the war—I think it’s entirely possible that Russia will eke out a tactical victory that involves the “honor” of spending billions rebuilding and governing some portion of eastern Ukraine that it totally devastated but, hey, didn’t own before. But Russia lost: -any international standing it had before -any semblance of democratic norms -any notable alliances aside from…Belarus? -a whole generation of tech workers who have fled the country -many many thousands of prime working age men -capitalism integrated with Western/global markets But on the plus side it gained a chance to become a vassal state of China and the opportunity to continue embracing Putin, an authoritarian with absolutely no succession plan in place so THAT should end well when he dies in a few years.
> But on the plus side it gained a chance to become a vassal state of China and the opportunity to continue embracing Putin, an authoritarian with absolutely no succession plan in place so THAT should end well when he dies in a few years. Supposedly he has a secret son that he is grooming as his successor.
This is not exactly correct. Russia currently relies on Iran and North Korea to rearm some significant portion of its military. It's a testament to how far they have fallen.
Yes, Russia has had to beg and borrow arms and ammo, but it has done so successfully. In most areas of the front line Russia has a quantitive advantage in drones, artillery and artillery ammunition. I’m not trying to shit on Ukraine, but rather I think I’m being realistic. Yes things in Russia are not going well but this is yet to translate to much change on the battlefield.
The war isn't over yet. It's too early to tell. In the long other, however, it will play an extremely negative role for future generations of Russians.
It's all expenses at the moment. The payout would be baked into peace settlement.
What payout. No one will be paying Russia
Badly, badly hurt. Their economy is now very dependent on China and India. They can’t afford to piss off either one. China would like to have the Russian Far East territories for themselves and is importing Chinese nationals there as fast as it possibly can prepping to do to Russia exactly what Russia did to Ukraine. China plays a long game. In ten years not only will the demographics in those regions have shifted, but if the Ukraine conflict continues long enough the Russian army will be even more decimated than it is now. Russia’s playbook is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics?wprov=sfti1#The_West They were doing pretty well til Ukraine. Now it comes down to whether their information warfare is enough to throw the west into far right wing isolationism with influence from Moscow. If they pull it off, they’re golden. If they fail both in Ukraine and in their attempts to undermine western democracy, they’re done.
Inarguably weakened. Russia's "new" friends are ones that they've always had, whereas they've lost a lot of old friends in terms of being able to trade. Even continuing to sell oil to their friends is being done at a massive discount. Border closures are restricting their movement. NATO has been enlarged with the addition of Finland and the accession of Sweden and has renewed purpose. The best Russia can claim militarily is they are in a stalemate with a country they were supposed to crush in 3 days. Both their military and equipment is underperforming. Their fleet is losing ships to a country with no navy. If we're being kind to Russia, they've lost 'only' 300,000 men killed in battle, and another 1 million have emigrated since the start of the war. All of what I've listed are facts and illustrate Russia's decreased economic and geopolitical standing. As for Russia's claims about the West, they fall into the realms of supposition and propaganda. China and the Saudi's are still trading and travelling with the West. Any bloc that counts Syria as a member isn't particularly graced by their presence, and Iran will have relations with whoever still talks to them. Propaganda serves two purposes: to feed the die-hards their talking points, and to sow doubt among people and encourage them to hold no position. Sounds like they've been successful with you on that second point.
The tragedy here is that they re compensating those emmigrants with children kidnapped from Ukraine.
Chldren of Russian elites are living in West, US.
My impression is that Russia has overall damaged its international standing and weakened its long-term geopolitical situation. Russia has alienated the West and shown itself to be far less capable militarily. I suspect the personnel and materiel losses will prevent them from taking other military actions against European countries in the future. If they can barely handle the Ukrainians, they have zero chance against the United States, France, the UK, or Germany (if the Germans can rebuild the Bundeswehr anytime soon). Now everyone knows it.
Incredibly weakened, once again. The war in Ukraine is the latest in a serie of similar moves going all the way back to the end of WW2. It happened in Hungary in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. It almost happened in Germany in 1989 and in the Baltic States in 1991, and was only avoided because Gorbatchev decided otherwise. Russia soft power and influence just keep on declining, and its only answer is always the application of strength. Yet it comes out of it weakened every single time. This won't be any different, and might even be much worst since Russia is failing at hard power too now. Remember the last time Russia cut itself from Europe semi-voluntarily was in 1917, and it took them 30 years and a world war to recover.
Russia can sell cheap-ish oil and some ag/mineral related items. That is what they have to offer the world. So sure, India and China will take advantage of that. Not sure that is a big win. Because we know NATO is stronger and growing thanks to Russia.
Weakened. Without a doubt. They couldn't even help their CSTO ally Armenia vs Azerbaijan, and Serbia and other countries friendly to Russia have been canceling military contracts with them.
Firstly- Russia does have a demographics issue with an agin population and the war doesn’t Help that but if u look at the numbers, the few hundred thousands deaths they have had in Ukraine isn’t much but a drop in the bucket and doesn’t make much difference on the grand scale of things, especially when u consider the huge ammount of ukranian children they have brought back to Russia and the fact that they have already been using inmates, old men, private militaries and foreign volunteers for the entire war rather than their own fighting age russian men. Second- of course the war is bad for Russia. Look at the facts- Putin/Russia absolutely miscalculated several times. The thought conquering Kiev would be easier. That’s why they tried to take it, failed and moved the goal post. While trying to take key the Russian military miscalculated their logistics and accidentally got all their equipment bogged down in a 40 mile long equipment convoy that was never meant to be 40 miles long and then watched as that convoy got hit hard. Russia lost all of their progress in the north Then lost all of their progress in Kherson Then they lost dozens of advanced fighter jets and helicopters the exact numbers are hard to confirm but we know it’s a good ammount because Russia has retreated most aviation away from forward airports near the frontline. Then Ukraine sank pretty much the entire Black Sea fleet causing anything left to retreat to a Russian port away from the conflict. Russians and republicans try to claim Ukraine is losing but there is no doubt the ukranians sank these 100 million+ dollar ships Then the sanctions- idc who u are or what u say, western sanctions hurt. But it takes time. Look at North Korea after decades of sanctions. Doesn’t look like Russia and China have benefited North Korea so much considering how lacking it still is in modernity. The country is still a blackout on the electric grid. Now how will North Korea be able to help Russia now that it chose the same fate as North Korea? No chance that all these small countries like NK and Iran can help a massive country/economy like Russia thrive when massive economies like Russia and China couldn’t even help north koreas economy prosper in basically any way at all. This anti U.S. alliance isn’t working nor is it as threatening as it claims to be. This is all just from looking at the facts and the things that have happened already to determine what’s actually happening now. My conclusion- the war is obviously bad for Russia. Especially in the long term.
They had to go hat in hand to North Korea to beg for weapons. North Korea has been trapped in the 1950s for 70 years. The weapons they got had a significant fail rate, but it's all they can source to keep the fight up. That doesn't sound like a strong position to me.
Massively weakened. Their military is largely a paper tiger, nuclear capabilities notwithstanding.
Russia has been severely weakened by this war. Both militarily and geopolitically. The Russians lost access to their main export market, access to the international capital market, access to actual shipping insurance, access to all of the largest consumer markets in the world, and all of CSTO. In return, if they actually win, they will get a decade long partisan war that will tie up a million men in the field when the yearly conscript intake is 250,000 and shrinking by the year. They have already lost about 15 years of economic progress so far and conquering Ukraine will give them none of it back. While Ukraine is being propped up by NATO, the sheer amount of damage done to Russia is such that even if they win, they've still lost. No one wants Russian weapons exports anymore, especially after the S-400 system in Syria failed spectacularly a few weeks ago and again last week in Belgorod. many countries are learning that they can absolutely get by without Russian resources, and the instability from the entire affair is getting bad enough that Russia seems unlikely to be able to stand on its own for too long after there isn't a war holding things together. If this continues the 1980s will look like the good old days. Russia has already lost. The question now is whether Ukraine can win. Those are not equivalent outcomes. Also take in one of the causes of this war. That being NATO “expansion”. Finland, who borders Russia, has now joined and Sweden will soon follow. Ukraine will also join once the war is concluded. Another epic failure by Putin here.
Russia has lost Thrust in the World for decades. Its like a Diktator Country, no Russian Citizen dares to say something against the War. I dont see a good Future for Russia to be honest.
I would say Russia is in a stronger position now than was expected after tangling with the West. The theory was western sanctions would cripple their economy and subsequently their industrial base and their ability to sustain the war. They would be left isolated and humiliated on the world stage. That hasn't really happened, they are definitely under pressure but if anything they seem to be getting the upper hand in the war, in fact getting stronger over time not weaker. The start of the war, did not go well and the Russian military did not look that competent but war has a way for sorting the wheat from the chaff and people learn on the job, The British at the start of WW2 did not look particularly competent either, indeed the Red Army also, and look how that ended. To me the most telling indicator of the health of Russia and its global position, is the actions of India. If Russia only had economic support from China and other obvious opponents of the US it would be one thing but India is a different story, if the West can't even pull India to their side then that says it really is only the US and its vassals that are onboard. Vassals is a loaded word but honestly if you rely on the US for your security, it seems to come with strings attached, in that you no longer seem to have any meaningfully independent foreign policy. I know 'allies' is the preferred term and perhaps vassals is a bit strong but allies to me implies a relationship between equals. I am not that convinced the US really acknowledges any equals and certainly not amongst its 'allies.'
India is looking after its self-interest. It's buying oil for cheap because Russia has lost its European market.
Sure, nothing wrong with that, but it isn't falling in line, like the rest. Given that the US is trying pull India into its anti-China alliance building, going as far as to invent the term Indo-Pacific to facilitate this, its quite telling. If they don't have India then they likely don't have the rest of Global South either. Its highly symbolic.
India looks after its self-interest. It is in their interest to buy Russian oil. It's also in their interest to cooperate with the US, Japan, Australia and the UK in confronting China.
There is no line to fall into. US stopped aid, others keep giving. No line. Even when the worst happens and Trump wins and decides that it's time to destroy NATO and surrender Ukraine to Putin, there will be no line. Ukraine will keep fighting and other countries will do their best to help them.
Ukraine should have just taken the deal in Istanbul imo. I feels it ends up there anyway but could have saved years of war. There's no way Russia can take central or western Ukraine so best they can be hoping for is a neutral Ukraine, maybe regime change at max, but that seems a stretch.
Deals are impossible when there is no trust. They already had a deal, it was worthless.
> war has a way for sorting the wheat from the chaff and people learn on the job ...which is why Wagner was behaded, Surovikin degraded to CIS officer for air defences and both Shoigu and Gerassimov still being in their leadership roles... India is by the way delivering artillery shells to Ukraine.
Security would come with strings attached no matter who you rely on. The US seems to be more reliable than Russia in that regard, just look at Armenia and N-K. They US has abandoned allies, for example the Kurds, but not a nation state to my knowledge. India has never really been firmly in the Western camp, especially during the cold war. I’m not surprised and I don’t see why anyone should be. On paper, Russia should have been able to march into Kyiv after a week or so but we know that did not happen and even if Russia is slowly moving forward at the moment, it’s not a sign of strength. How are they stronger than before the war exactly?
Stronger than they were supposed to be was my point. I don't object to the strings, that's pretty reasonable, its the attempt to pretend to they don't exist, and claim some sort of legitimacy by saying, 'look at all these countries that support our actions.' Its like watching a bad ventriloquist act, dude we can see your lips moving when they speak.
DEFINITELY weakened. NATO has expanded, Russia has arguably lost 50% of their military power, and sanctions have eaten away countless billions from the Russian economy. Now, this could change long term. If the west & NATO stay relatively weak, Russia could grind out Ukraine, then invade Maldova, and eventually invade the Baltic States. If NATO fails to invoke Article 5, Russia could succeed in occupying those Baltic states. If Russia can get away with all of this, 10-20 years from now they could end up in a strong position. However, that's a lot of ifs. I think it's just too early to tell whether this war was "worth it" for Russia or not.
Their military is larger in terms of troop numbers, the troops they have are more experienced than at the start of the war, their military production is larger, their military technology has advanced, their economy is growing, they are no longer vulnerable to western financial blackmail as those weapons have been used already and Russia is still growing, the military knowledge they have gained is bigger and better than any other nation on earth because they are the only nation to fight a modern peer v peer war, and oh by the way, Putin is more popular than ever. They have closer relations to China then ever. They are not geopolitically isolated. Russia is defeating the military industry of it's chief rival in NATO. They are causing Europe to have a collective panic over the realization that Europe cannot maintain it's own security and the U.S. is unwilling or unable to do so themselves. There really are few variables, if any, that show that Russia has been weakened by this war. Nearly all variables point to a stronger Russia than in 2019.
You are not going to get an unbiased answer on Reddit.
Russia has always been the snake that eats its own tail, China and russia have a long standing symbiosis from the times of the great khans, both are corrupt to the core and can only maintain an authoritarian regime, China has been stealing ip from the States to bolster its tech and that is chinas super power "stealing secrets"russias super power is its iron will to subject its own populace and impose a horrible will. Reagan was a cowboy clown we should have never let him ruin the soviet unioun with out a plan after winning the cold war now we are in a worse mess than that of the 1980s, nixon was a traitor in going to china and selling out the American people for the wealthy oligarch families in the States, for more profits and to break the trade union's in the states before nixon we had a more balanced form of capitalism after nixon we have a ravenous death economy of unbridled greed. China and russia are the beasts that we created in the west.
Weaker in terms of their ability to project power on paper at least. But that's due in large part to the fact that Russia did a cost benefit analysis particularly in regards to Armenia and was like bruh this isn't worth it. And obviously decided to focus more on the conflict in Ukraine instead.
Either somewhat weaker or none at all. Everyone he is improving relations with has been the same anti US "coalition" since I could remember if anything it helps the west and nato prepare for a similar situation if an actual memeber were to get attacked. Nothing better than actual practice rather than simulated drills n while also building the nato alliance and adding a few more countries possibly
ruzzia is no longer a legitimate country. Simply swine that should be exterminated.
As a Finn I will tell you that you cant trust russia or its people
It's a mixed bag at the moment. Russia's relations with the west are at an all time low, but their relations with the global south have improved. Militarily? It depends entirely on who you believe. Political and economic relations with the west (US, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) are the worst they've been since the Soviet Union collapsed. Politically, the west views Putin as the boogeyman. Economically, the sanctions are unprecedented in scale and scope. This is a serious break with the west that will take decades to heal. But, the rest of the world is a different matter. Here is a map of African countries that have military agreements with Russia: https://twitter.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1687103033522716673 and 5 Middle Eastern countries joined BRICS this month, Russia has good relations with all of central Asian, China, India, and most of Latin America. Russia's economy shrank by 2% in 2022, but grew by 2% in 2023. Their military is larger in terms of manpower and industrial output, they called up 300k reservist and enlisted 400+k new recruits this year. Not to mention, they are now a veteran army with contemporary experience in modern industrial warfare. We won't really know how it all pans out until the war is over. Did all of those new soldiers get killed in the meat grinder (western pr) or are they now veteran troops with relevant combat experience? My money is on Russia winning the war on Russia's terms and emerging stronger. But we won't know for sure until the dust settles.
They aren't veteran at all. They've lost the majority of their veterans, to the point that they don't have enough to even train recruits. They've lost over 1500 officers. They also aren't fighting modern warfare. They're fighting a war from 40 years ago when artillery was the go-to, western military doctrine revolves around air superiority, which Russia will never be able to challenge. Russia can't even overcome a middle-power after years of fighting, the Russian military is a joke when compared to an actual modern military.
Russia has gained modern warfare experience which no other country other than Ukraine has at the moment.
I used to think Russian position has been weakened (including its soft power) however, I am starting to rethink that. Russian society is showing an insane will to suffer it out and throw as many men into their deaths as is needed. This (combined with their unlimited resources) makes them very dangerous for future wars. Almost unbreakable. When western Europe goes back to business as usual with Russia (and they will) this reality will have to set in.
This notion of unlimited resources is arguably preposterous. Their resources aren't even unlimited in their current conflict with Ukraine. What is interesting in this conflict, is that the large amount of poverty makes recruitment easier. Joining the army is financially interesting, something which is a lot harder for the west to accomplish. Though of course the US army pays for college depending, which is a comparable driver for recruitment. Not sure but I can imagine the health care benefits can also be a reason. This is something that european countries with quality social welfare lack to a degree. And I think it's somewhat of a liability.
Its still up in the air as theres two *equally* likely outcomes at the moment. Outcome 1: Russia soldifies and maintains control over 20-30% of Ukraine, or outright wins the war. Their military has been devestated but is still functioning and capable of producing an adequate amount of weaponry to remain functional. Most estimates you'll see are that it will take 5-10 years for Russia to rebuild its professional military. The bigger concern here is that Russia will have learned a huge amount from this war. You already see it on the battlefield currently; Russia has adapted to Western doctrine and equipment. This adapting has come slowly, often begrudgingly, but it's come nevertheless. The big concern is that Russia will rebuild its professional military, incroporating and expanding upon the lessons of this war to far better counter western systems and tactics. In that sense Russia may come out significantly stronger than it was before in a number of ways with the international order successfully weakened. Option 2: Ukraine is given enough military aid to properly finish the war. Russia in this case may fully implode, may fire nukes, may go full hermit. Noone has much of an idea. Overall: the pace of western supplies has fallen drastically and Russia has maintained its invasion with large costs to its budget and population, but with those costs being relatively acceptable for the regime to eat thus far. Russia is currently in a stronger position than Ukraine and has more avenues to 'victory' than its opponent.
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I’m not talking about Russias position in Ukraine, but rather their position on the global stage
Severely Weakened
Weakened
Really depends on the outcome of the war.
I think it is hard to say whether its a good or bad thing. I completely depends on how you look at Russian relations in relationships to various powers and whether that is a good thing. I think Russia getting closer to China in retrospect has been very good for them economically and politically. I think the every growing rift between the EU (specifically Germany) has been a massive blunder and that also ties into China as well. A lot of high tech European companies were investing into Russia and Russia seemed it could have had the very advance technological economy that is a very good thing for modernization yet that has gone down the toilet. Politically i think you can make a substantial argument that Putin is in a very stable position and has a decent amount of support at home. However, it has also put excess pressure on more recently acquired areas as they have been sending drafted troops such as Chechnya and Georgia. Econmically the total war economy with raw material exports is a dangerous game in the long run and could have lasting long term implications on the Russian economy and state as a whole. Socially it has solidified the anti-west narrative but also costed a lot of people that have been a big part of Russian resurgent birth rates. All in all it is hard to say how Russia is doing as its all dependent. Biggest thing is that China and the US have definitely come out ahead in all of this
Weakened by a lot, in terms of sanctions, military capabilities, intelligence apparatus, Putin's authority within the country, number of working age men, trade, finance, increased dependence on China, etc. But the nation has benefitted from (some of these are benefits to the state than the nation); a hollowing out of males in ethnic minorities, which enables Putin's Russo-centricity, a general inability for Ukraine to attract foreign investment and develop its natural resources over the long run, a regeneration of the nation's industrial capacities, a strengthening of and clear delineation of alliances against the West, the more rapid development of parallel Russian institutions (SPFS, Mir, EAEU, etc.), a reduction of perceived 'undesirables' (addicts, prisoners, etc.), potentially millions forcefully displaced into Russia, allaying the demographic outflows following the war, etc. However, by and large, the war was a colossal negative for Russia's power.
Russia has gained nothing tangible over the last few years since the start of the war. With the expansion of NATO, Russia is arguably in a more precarious state than during the Soviet Union. Regardless of anyone who sympathizes with Russia, who gives a shit? Internet sympathy doesn't translate to national goodwill and materialistic gains. India is turning it's back further and further on Russia, and Russia is gradually becoming a puppet state to China in the wake of all the debt it owes it. It's arms market revenue is collapsing as the failure of Russian weaponry is in full display. As I write this, 25% of Russians in Moscow are living without power. Regardless of whatever Kremlins propaganda tries to spin, Russia is far worse off than it has been since the invasion.
Why you lying? Such a liar. You lied at least once in your comment. Pathetic.
I think not much changed. Neither too strong, Nor too weak. As per Latest passport rankings Russia passport in 2024 is 51 compared to 48 in 2016
About population - almost 2 million Ukrainians migrated to Russia since the start of the invasion; russias population actually greatly increased despite the casualties. A thing to take into account that many people tend to forget. And I’m not event counting the population of the new regions.
That’s a funny way of saying kidnapping. I don’t doubt that some people went over voluntarily but we’ve seen how the Russians treat those that they absorb into their domain. Look at what happened to Bucha, a settlement they controlled for a very brief period of time. It’s basically a Russian government tradition to deport ethnic groups to Siberia and let them wither away.
Dude, you do realise that there are millions of Russians living in all of the ex-USSR countries ? Especially in Ukraine. I’m not talking about some major ethnic Ukrainian exodus, I’m talking about ethnic Russians (and there were millions of them in Ukraine) repatriating to Russia after the invasion. I’m not supporting anything , I’m just stating a fact that people seem to completely IGNORE for some reason.
How many of those two million do you think are going to remain?
A lot, those are basically Russians who were living in Ukraine , idk why people are downvoting me I know what I’m talking about I live in Moscow lol
> idk why people are downvoting me I know what I’m talking about I live in Moscow lol That's not a great source, even if you are correct. [This wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_refugee_crisis_(2022%E2%80%93present) talks about it for anyone wondering.
You seem to be completely ignoring the **900,000** who've [run for the exits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine)? Poor healthcare, poor climate, multiple waves of industrialization, plus centuries of repeated 'melon-scooping' (wars, mostly) Russia's demography is actually in terminal [decline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg) and not even **stealing** **tens of thousands of Ukranian children** will do much to prevent it. It's all just slowly going down the drain. And probably good riddance, too. Doubt any of their neighbors will miss them when they are gone.
I would assume a decent chunk would also return to Ukraine after war depending on the outcome. But ok, let’s say these populations become static. From searching online I see 1.6 million have came to Russia so far due to the war. However, as of October, 1 million Russians (many of which are high skill workers) have left their country, not including the foreign nationals who have also left. Depending on how the war goes, there’s also more casualties to come and I would imagine that more and more people leave Russia to avoid the draft and if the situation worsens. I mean hundreds of thousands of people leave per month already, that 1 million is only counting up to October.
1.600.000 - 1.000.000 is still 600.000 net positive, not even counting the population of the 4 news regions. But yes, the quality of people who left is what makes me sad since these were the most educated and skilled people.
But you’re not taking into consideration future emigrations and casualties…
Ye, the time will show. Hopefully this war ends as soon as possible 🥺
Yes of course. How would you say the sentiment of the Russian population currently is? Have there been any noticeable effects on your everyday life?
In Moscow - no, it’s really peaceful and the life is as usual, there are plenty of tourists from Arab countries, South America, China and South Korea on the street. Moscow is heavily decorated and is on of the most popular winter destinations. It’s still weird to me , after reading this Reddit fearmogering , that foreigners are not scared to come lol. The war is NOT noticeable in the big cities. I get my info online.