Posted on 06/02/2023 8:55:31 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Are you in a vegetative state deep enough to believe a single word coming from the Russian government?
For every battle we have at least four different numbers:
Of course, you are entitled to believe whatever you want.
The question here is: how insane are the Russians?
Are they willing to commit national suicide by lobbing nukes into Ukraine?
Do they fantasize for even one second that they can use the most gawdawful weapons against Ukraine and not suffer those same weapons used against Moscow and St. Petersburg?
I don't think so, not for a minute, because Vlad the Invader is Old Soviet KGB, and the Old Soviets were bullies, amoral empire builders and massive oppressors of weaker peoples.
The Old Soviets responded to weakness with aggression and to strength with respect.
Whatever they threatened, they were never insane or suicidal, and would not risk the MADness of nuclear war.
Today, Vlad the Invader is old and by some accounts he's also quite physically sick.
But is he insane enough to destroy the very country he's spent his life defending, Russia?
I don't think so.
Bullies? What do you call our govt agencies? Your entire post is surreal in context of what is going on right here in the USA!
May putin/russia reap what they have sown
May it be so!
You forgot capitalization and punctuation. Otherwise a splendid 2 letters. Keep it up and we’ll have you speaking in complete sentences.
CC
That is true. I was just making an observation about Russians historically spending the lives of their troops cheaply.
CC
And that is what goes for a reply comment on FR these days and in the country. If you remotely disagree or one “thinks” you are disagreeing with their world view you a called a pin head and often much worse.
If you support giving aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invasion you are obviously a xiden loving pedophile….. and will be subject to many”fact” based reply’s on your intelligence, family history…..
Sad
Using the value of the ruble is not a very accurate measure of the strength of the economy. The ruble is not widely used and value is easily manipulated. With that said the central bank of Russia has done about all they can to support and stabilize
I recommend looking up on YouTube a site called joe bloggs, he covers economics pretty well and has some good stuff
Russias spending on defense has been a fraction of the US for many reasons, but when you look at their budget 65 billion is a very large number
Lastly consider the source, is Russia telling the truth and considering their economic abilities and needs what does this say for their future. Russia began the war with a huge soviet legacy in equipment and supplies. They have done a pretty good job blowing through that. Replacing or rebuilding will be a challenging prospect
My 2 cents
Putin and Russia were broke and couldn’t afford the war in another article.
Both sides are winning, both sides are loosing. Russia has lost more tanks than it has, Ukraine publicized it’s secret counter-offensive plans on YouTube.
All propaganda from the news media.
F—k Ukraine and Russia. Not our problem.
Peace talks are what happens after Putin leaves Ukraine - all of it.
But is he insane enough to destroy the very country he’s spent his life defending, Russia?
—
He already has. The loss of over 200,000 men from Russia’s workforce is a major blow to its economy, which is in shambles. even before the war Russia only exported oil & gas, military equipment.
Now, both of those exports are in trouble, especially military equipment which it cannot manufacture without Western sanctioned parts and cannot manufacture even the quantity needed to keep up with its own expenditures.
Even before they invaded Ukraine, there were few Western companies and fewer venture capitalists who wanted to invest in the crime ridden country; no one wants to invest in Russia now.
Now a country teetering on the brink of internal collapse.
Since the recent "smart sanctions" regime has worked well to limit Russia's vital oil and gas revenue, it must soon either print money or impose war taxes. Either choice is politically and economically dangerous and not sustainable in the long run.
Overall, in spite of Russia's vast reserves of manpower, its war effort is sputtering because of its thin and impaired technological and industrial base. In effect, Russia cannot generate enough weapons and equipment to convert its raw manpower into enough combat strength to win. Nor does Russia have the financial reserves needed to carry the direct and indirect cost of the war without soon making painful impositions on the civilian economy.
If this seems counter-intuitive, scholars have long noted the paradox that autocratic regimes tend to have relatively large peacetime military establishments and aggressive attitudes and policies. Yet democratic, populist governments tend to do far better at mobilizing their economies and generating large wartime military establishments.
Russia still has to attack Israel in the Gog-Magog war.
Maybe it’s the Kyiv-Moscow war, and after all, Zelensky is a Jew (or to quote SNL, a quarter Jew, not too shabby).
GOG = globalists, obamanations, gays
MAGOG = Moscow against globalists, obamanations, gays
Russia doesn’t need to buy anything from other countries to manufacture war materials...
From an old guy's skeptical perspective, the whole comes down to being in the stadium, during the beginning of the third quarter of the game, and “sides” are declaring the winner of the game, while the game has not been won by either team. Yea team? Wait. An outcome will become apparent. Until then, it won't be so apparent.
Direct cost my ass. The value of equipment they lost is much over 100 billion, not to mention the lost productivity of mobilized/killed dudes who had to abandon their jobs. According to that “logic” the cost of western aid for Ukraine is close to zero as vast majority of that is stuff out of stocks.
The real problem here is that Kremlin idiots fucked up but are too afraid to admit it, so they keep producing tonnes of propaganda like “but it doesn't hurt us much”, “but bio labs and nazi-homos !11” and their operatives + useful idiots keep spreading it around. Just shut up, apologize and crawl back to Asia where you belong.
Converting rubles to USD in Russia is not a simple task. And taking any currency out of the country is even more difficult and costly.
The Russian central bank can make the ruble whatever they determine is in their interest.
The ruble rate jumped when Russia paid 20% on ruble-saving accounts. This was done to control the currency, an unsustainable rate and was tapered off.
The Big Mac index gave a fair approximation When McDs was still in Russia. After that it becomes complicated.
Right, because when I think of buying advanced microprocessors I think of russian made ones. Okay
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