Russia and Ukraine

[Thumpalumpacus]

Thumpalumpacus:
Australia is sending 50 Abrams Tanks. The US is sending 30 Abrams tanks. And France is sending Mirage D’assault fighter planes as soon as the first half of 2025.

Yes, I'm aware. South Korea is also considering sending K2 MBTs and direct shipments of 155mm shells, too.

[Fake Messiah]

Russia is on the verge of collapse. Europe cannot abandon targeted sanctions

There is an urgent imperative for European countries to make the sanctions regime against Russia more airtight. The IMF just raised its forecast for Russian GDP growth in 2024 from 3.2 per cent to 3.6 per cent. Yet the outlook for the Russian economy in 2025 looks much bleaker. The IMF just slashed its GDP growth projections from 1.5 per cent to 1.3 per cent next year. Even though Russia’s interest rates are at 19 per cent and soaring, inflation remains stubbornly high at 8.6 per cent.

As key sectors of its civilian economy stagnate, it is more reliant than ever on its bloated military budget to sustain growth. Even in the defence sector, Russia has 400,000 fewer workers than it needs and severely lags many industrial economies in automation. A combination of labour shortages, rising prices and foreign capital flight could lead to the bursting of Russia’s defense-industrial boom in the coming year.

Tighter sanctions would make Russia’s economic outlook even more pessimistic and raise the costs of its aggression against Ukraine. Europe needs to present a unified front against Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers and front companies that do Russia’s bidding.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10...sanctions/

[Thumpalumpacus]

Russia is on the verge of collapse. Europe cannot abandon targeted sanctions

There is an urgent imperative for European countries to make the sanctions regime against Russia more airtight. The IMF just raised its forecast for Russian GDP growth in 2024 from 3.2 per cent to 3.6 per cent. Yet the outlook for the Russian economy in 2025 looks much bleaker. The IMF just slashed its GDP growth projections from 1.5 per cent to 1.3 per cent next year. Even though Russia’s interest rates are at 19 per cent and soaring, inflation remains stubbornly high at 8.6 per cent.

As key sectors of its civilian economy stagnate, it is more reliant than ever on its bloated military budget to sustain growth. Even in the defence sector, Russia has 400,000 fewer workers than it needs and severely lags many industrial economies in automation. A combination of labour shortages, rising prices and foreign capital flight could lead to the bursting of Russia’s defense-industrial boom in the coming year.

Tighter sanctions would make Russia’s economic outlook even more pessimistic and raise the costs of its aggression against Ukraine. Europe needs to present a unified front against Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers and front companies that do Russia’s bidding.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10...sanctions/

Another point to consider is that in terms of domestic economy, military spending is largely unremunerative. When you spend millions of rubles on artillery shells, sure, you ramp employment and GDP in raw numbers. But military spending is not investment. That is money literally thrown into the fire. When your economy is under sanctions, the inflow of foreign currency is curtailed, meaning that money spent on making bombs and shells and missiles to be discharged bring you no further income.

Internally, the Russian economy may last a while, but it's not much different from the German economy in 1938 -- overheated, producing "goods" with no return on investment until your troops sack the nation you're attacking.

It follows that the longer Ukraine holds out, the more the Russian economy goes on a diet -- and the more precarious is Putin's position. Even if they win in Ukraine, they've already destroyed much of the industrial base that could ostensibly offset the "investment" of their invasion.

[pocaracas]

So... Russia just hosted a BRICS meeting and you guys think they are worried about their economy?
China and India are fine with dealing with them, so they can have almost everything they need, given that most things are made in China. With the US and EU putting tarrifs on Chinese goods, who do you think will buy the stuff that "westerners" don't buy?

[Fake Messiah]

China has good economic relations with the West.

And when it comes to BRICS, it's all mostly a (shit) show. BRICS countries are just looking how they can take advantage of each other, unlike G7 (western economic block) where countries are looking how to help each other.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, russia is worried about it's economy. Their own analysis tells them that unless they can exit the war in ukraine this year they will no longer be anything other than a regional power.

[Fake Messiah]

Car bombs, lawlessness and psychic healers: Russia revisits wild 1990s

As the war in Ukraine approaches its third grim anniversary, history has begun to repeat itself, posing a threat to Putin’s grip on Russia. The Kremlin’s decision to free tens of thousands of convicts from prison to fight in Ukraine has seen a two-fold rise in organised crime, according to official figures, while business disputes are increasingly being resolved by violence.

“The increase in violent crime generates a demand for protection, which serious criminals can offer, against thugs and former criminals back from the front,” said Federico Varese, the author of a book called Russia in Four Criminals.

Crimes involving firearms have also risen by as much as 17 times in some regions close to Ukraine, as guns flow freely across the border. Although the pact that Orlov described — stability in return for acquiescence to Putin’s authoritarianism — was annulled with the onset of all-out war in Ukraine, the outbreak of mobster violence is a troubling sign for Putin.

“Russia has returned to the 1990s. And, as ever, during a descent, we have sunk even deeper,” Dmitry Bykov, a Russian poet who opposes Putin, told the Telegram news channel Mozhem Obyasnit. “When there is shooting in the streets, this is always a loss of control and a symptom of a crisis.”

In Moscow last week, a businessman, his six-year-old son and their driver were injured when a bomb that had been wrapped in a baby’s blanket exploded on the bonnet of his car. A day earlier, in St Petersburg, masked men armed with hammers and axes broke into a factory during working hours and destroyed equipment.

Last month, two security guards were killed close to the Kremlin when armed men burst into the headquarters of Wildberries, an online shopping company that is owned by Tatiana Kim, Russia’s wealthiest woman. The incident was described as “the worst example of corporate violence” since the 1990s by the Moscow Times, an independent website that has been banned in Russia.

The Kremlin’s efforts to boost its army in Ukraine have also resulted in the collapse of the criminal justice system. Although Russia has been freeing convicts to fight at the front since 2022, Putin this month approved a law that grants suspects, even in murder cases, total immunity from prosecution if they agree to sign a contract with the armed forces.

After outlawing the non-existent “international public LGBT movement” as an extremist and terrorist group last year, Moscow is now on the verge of banning the promotion of a childfree lifestyle, both of which it said were imported from the West. Senior officials have also alleged that the “furries” trend for people to cosplay as animals is a western plot aimed at enslaving the world.

Despite Putin’s promotion of an ultra-conservative, Orthodox ideology, there has been a huge rise in demand for so-called magical services since the start of the war in Ukraine, a phenomenon that is thought to be a result of widespread uncertainty and unease over the conflict. The church has called for a ban on such services, a demand that has been backed by some MPs.

https://archive.ph/VMBNV

[The Grand Nudger]

Looks like russia may have done another oopsie in the critical Pokrovsk direction. Outnumbered 5-1, ukrainian defenders score 200 vehicle kills in a failed assault on the road to Illinka.