So yeah, it seems the war did not hurt them as much as anticipated or reported.
The Russians know this is a war of attrition and a marathon.
They are well aware that you cannot utilize all your forces as this will be a longer campaign and you need to rotate folks in and out.
They know they have other contingencies / threats, and they cannot burn certain resources or commit more than a certain troop level to Ukraine.
But Brandon imposed all these severe sanctions. Are you telling me they didn’t work?
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.
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 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.
“Russia is spending surprisingly little on its war on Ukraine”
nothing published by uber-fascist “business insider” is believable ... that outfit is pure propaganda ... period ...
3% of your GDP in a war where you’ve gained about 100 yards in the last year is a lot. Sure not as much as when they GOT invaded. But of course this is only saying “direct” costs. Are mercenaries “direct”?