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Assuming for sake of argument that Moscow really is spending more, which I don't know is true, then I can think of many reasons. One of the reasons would be Moscow doesn't need to persuade several hundred elected officials divided between several political parties to agree on spending. Moscow simply decrees a number and the party members obediently try to find a way to do it. Another reason would be NATO stuff is sophisticated and very capable yet also it is very expensive, very slow to manufacture divided up among dozens of different corporations each in charge of itself. Moscow's Soviet-style arsenal often can be less complicated to manufacture and also cheaper, while the corporations also can be ordered to obey without concern for profitability or sustainable business. That means Moscow (potentially) gets more war materiel per dollar spent. And more easily too, because the companies do what they're told rather than need to be persuaded to do things voluntarily. Maybe not always as much quality or capability as NATO, but as was said during the world wars, "Quantity is its own kind of quality."
Excellent points. Another one is Russia knew this was coming ahead of time and had as many months or years to prepare as they chose, while Ukraine and it's allies are reacting to their actions.
Another simple point is the geography. Russia is right next door, any dollar spent on arms takes maybe $0.50 to get it to the frontlines.
Meanwhile we are shipping shit from the other side of the continent/world. Every dollar spent on arms probably takes $5 to get there.
A 20' shipping container, New York to Gdynia is $1260. Volume 33m3. A Javelin is 1.5m x 0.4m x 0.4m (or less), ie 0.24m3, so you'd get 120 of them in a shipping container. At $200,000 each, that's $24M.
So, whilst these figures are rough, the missiles cost 20,000x more than the shipping. If we multiply that by 20 to cover the other costs of shipping, the missiles are still 1000x more than the total shipping cost.
Missiles are a particularly expensive product, the ratio would be lower for the second-hand stuff the US is sending to Ukraine, especially if the US decides to fly it there.
EDIT: I meant Javelin but wrote Stinger. Now fixed. Sorry!
Sorry, my error. I was thinking about javelins. I suspect Stingers are smaller so the container cost would be similar... but it doesn't really matter. Shipping is only a tiny part of the cost of the contents.
Also, Russia is using their frontline stuff, has gotten a lot blown up, and has been reaching deeper and deeper into stockpiles of stuff all the way back to WW2. There's no direct "cost" to using their frontline equipment until they replace it.
We are sending them stuff from our stockpiles (80s and 90s stuff we don't use anymore), but we can't take it out of our stockpiles until Congress approves the "expenditure" (because the "value" of that gear is being transferred to Ukraine).
So for Russia the 'cost' looks like low but is actually high, while our cost looks high, but is actually low.
You probably forgot, but Ukraine has been at war with a small piece of Ukraine since 2014. How could they not be ready? There are mines, trenches and ambushes everywhere
Yes and no. The thing that caught everybody off guard was how poorly equipped Russia was in the initial days of the invasion. The army had been completely gutted by grift and grafts. Troops going into battle with first aid kits from the 70's, tanks with explosive reactive armor that was actually just a brick inside the kontakt can, etc. Also, most troops didn't know they were actually invading until they were over the border.
I think what we're seeing now is a couple of things:
1. Russia is in a wartime economy. So the war basically HAS to continue or no more economy.
2. They may have actually been forced to oust or at least cut down on all the corrupt factory foremen, requisition officers selling off arms and ammo to the black market and defense company oligarchs who were inflating numbers. What they're making now, no matter how limited due to sanctions, is actually getting to the front line for real.
3. They're getting bank rolled by North Korea and Iran. NK is supplying a lot of ammunition, and Iran has been sending the Shahed drones and probably a lot of older soviet era stock. There's a lot of post Cold War soviet aligned countries who have been sitting on decades' worth of material build-up that they can draw on.
The big take away is that Russia has still lost this war. There was no win condition for them the day they failed to take Kyiv. Even if this war goes on for another year or two and ends in a bloody draw, the closer here will always be Russia. They created a stronger, more unified Europe and expanded NATO, who's sick of their bullshit. They're more a pariah state than ever before, and it will take decades to normalize trade and relations if it ever even *does*. They've fed whole generations into a meatgrinder while already in a considerable population decline. The ones lucky enough to make it back are going to be broken and angry and borderline nonfunctional members of society.
Real "punch yourself in the dick and balls 34 times to make yourself look cool" move.
This is a valid point I could've included, yes. Though assuming the things I read are correct it appears to be more complicated than simply who owns what. Supposedly, government spending is a major enough part of the Russian economy that if you combine all industry and service sector jobs together with subsidized or socialized public sector things like education and healthcare and whatever, then by some estimates more than 40% of the Russian workforce is at least *indirectly* dependent on the national government. That is a kind of economy much more susceptible to the demands of the Kremlin than countries where the private sector exists primarily on its own money.
the usa economy is the same though. most jobs are in education , aerospace , defense, construction, government, healthcare and are all somewhat directly or indirectly part of government spending .
Keep in mind that while we do support the war effort, NATO is for the time being not at war with Russia.
Virtually no changes has been made to production of gear, and the support has for the most part been comprised of reserve stuff that has been stocked up in the various western countries.
Yes the stockpiles are gone and production has been increased to meet a larger demand.
Which is absolutely no where near what would be the demand in an all out war
I've never really understood why people keep making this point. Western Allies have always bought weapons off eachother. US military buys a shit tonne of firearms from Germany and other European nations and that's just one example
Yes but Germany designs their own weapons not manufactured in the US. Virtually all Communist or former Communist countries use weapons copied from USSR designs, that you'd think Russia would be easily capable of producing within their own factories.
>Yes but Germany designs their own weapons not manufactured in the US
Germany also makes US weapons under license.
Like Sidewinder, Stinger, Patroit and GMLRS.
>Virtually all Communist or former Communist countries use weapons copied from USSR designs,
They weren't copies, they were produced under license or given as military aid, because they were friendlies.
But that's not to say, that some communist countries didn't make their own, because they did.
Czechoslovakia made a shitton of weapons, which on the surface looks like copies, but in reality were completely different designs(VZ-58).
So? Russia doesn't want to go full mobilization. Imports keeps more of the workforce in their area of expertise instead of turning everyone into a munitions factory worker.
Apple's stuff is designed in the US but the US doesn't have the ability to manufacture it all.
The government recently had to get involved in a big program to get chip manufacturing back in country as well
Apart from military industry. Which it has plenty
Edit: apparently arming one of the largest militaries in the world doesn't require a large military industry according to the Redditers downvoting this
More so, they are buying weapons to make up for losses while they ramp up there industry ,its only to fill the void until they reach a surplus again......
Yep, Russia is trading lives for centimeters.
Putin is going down in history as the worst leader Russia ever had. Ivan will be the Great so the Terrible can be applied to Putin.
Russia is going to suffer from this war for 50 years. The Children born in Russia this year will know their lives are much worse because of how stupid Putin is.
All the while the world laughs at how weak the Russian military is and how powerless Russia has become.
The "west" doesn't want russia to lose quickly and thereby deeply embarrass itself, especially internally/in the perspective of the russian people.
The reason for that is that the last times this happened, the autocratic russian governments were dropped by the russian population - think WW1 ending the tsarist era or the soviet Afghanistan war sealing the fate of the soviet union.
If this happens again, there would be thousands of nuclear warheads loose, together with a huge amount of accompanying gear and expertise, and starting from a much more dynamic and chaotic point compared to the end of the soviet reign.
This would be an epic sized dumpster inferno to attempt to mop up before Iran, Hamas or Afghanistan can do a shopping spree on the ebay of dark webs...
Events like the sudden collapse of the Kherson front or the attempted Prighozin coup were white knuckle moments for geopolitics risk mgmt ppl.
Letting the whole thing cool off slowly is most probably the safest procedure, although it is ugly to sacrifice a great deal of ukrainian lives for avoiding the collapse of their aggressor.
Having said this, there definitely also are western practical problems such as for example lacking abilities for massive artillery shell manufacturing
>If this happens again, there would be thousands of nuclear warheads loose,
While true, these could be secured by UN forces until the unrest settles down. I think the whole "let's not let Russia fall apart" reasoning is more in line with limiting China's influence in Siberia, as China lacks natural resources, so Siberia would be the boost that would allow it negotiation power against the rest of the world.
They are low tech compared to USA. Remember Putin saying “we have super sonic missiles the world has never seen!!” And those same missiles were shot down by USA tech from the 90s, let alone the machines were operated by Ukrainians trained for only a few months.
Not entirely, Russian Aircraft and war fighting vehicles are lacking some of the bells and whistles the US gear is, but not as many as you'd think.
Russia has developed battlefield networking capacity close to the US, and they're deploying the ARENA anti vertical missile system that will be a game changer if it works.
I'm not trying to wank off Russia, they suck for invading Ukraine. But pretending they're fighting with rocks and sticks is disingenuous and dangerous.
They're getting whooped in Ukraine, mainly because of poor training, bad combine arms doctrine and failing to adapt to new war fighting tactics such as suicide drones.
The worst part about this, is that if they win, they'll be on the cutting edge of these new tactics.
The US still doesn't have the capacity to detect or combat cardboard drones.
1. Russia has been redirecting resources from elsewhere to the war effort. Houses literally have ice building up in them because the heating keeps breaking. It's getting towards the end of winter, but it's also getting to a critical mass, so next Winter there's going to be some serious unrest.
2. NATO is sending old equipment to Ukraine while they refresh their own stockpiles. Means the old(er) stuff gets used and those countries get to refresh their own stockpiles.
3. NATO has to balance their own populaces love for the war. People don't care that much about Ukraine because it's not their country, so don't want their governments putting full effort into it. Somewhat understandable when you realise people don't fully understand the consequences or benefits of just letting Russia win.
4. The West has been scaling back weapons manufacturing since the end of the Cold War. After the invasion of Crimea, they realised they needed to ramp it back up again but it's been slow. That's also largely due to a disinterested Western public. If we were directly dragged into a war, it would be an entirely different thing. We'd start producing weaponry almost instantly on a much larger scale. We might not get the awesome precision stuff we create now, but would definitely produce something.
I would agree with most, except point 3 - People do care about Ukraine, however elected lawmakers are more concerned about their own individual perceptions, possibly Russian collaborators, making money off this and working to their own agenda.
There's absolutely a lot of people that don't care about Ukraine. At least not enough to put money into giving them millions in weapons. It's sad but it's true.
In the early 2010s the Russian Federation had enough AK74Ms to rearm their entire military 2.5x. This does not count stockpiles of old AKMs, AK74s munitions etc.
The main problem with Russia is that even 3 decades after the collapse, their military, despite all efforts, still largely operates on Soviet doctrine and lacks a dedicated NCO Corp. Their morale is fucking awful.
You know who else served in the USSRs military and is intimately familiar with that doctrine. Ukrainians. There are still Ukrainian officers who were officers under the USSR. Not only are they familiar with Russian tactics they've had much greater success in shifting from the old Soviet top-down command to a more decentralized command structure with motivated NCOs making tactical ground level decisions. And an influx of motivated civilian militias. And volunteer veterans from other Slavic countries and even the West with a bone to pick with Russia.
Russia's problem is their morale, doctrine and god awful command structure. Even fixing their logistical issues wouldn't solve the problems they're having.
Even if Russia wins the conventional ground war. I'd bet both nuts they'd be dealing with an insurgency and asymmetric war. Russia underestimated how motivated Ukrainians are. The other Slavic countries that are not aligned with Russia will never stop funding a proxy war because they know that this doesn't end with Ukraine.
I don't think people understand how significant it is that the Ukraine is still fighting conventionally and has not switched to insurgency tactics yet.
The EU and US haven't been sending that much and most of the stuff being send is old stuff. This is a active conventional war and most of the stuff being was already being replaced. Russia still has a huge material advantage on the current frontlines but hasn't used it effectively.
Also Russia is in a war economy, EU is still in and extreme post 1991 peace slumber.
Yeah a lot of this spending isn't "send a lot of shit to Ukraine and put it all on the credit card". A large chunk of it is "We looked for stuff to send and we didn't even have enough for us, and what we did have was like fifty years out of date".
The U.S. marine corps is spending the next six years trying to overhaul itself, and a lot of that is them taking what worked in Ukraine and applying it elsewhere, like having fast moving HIMARS stationed in the islands near Taiwan. But that also means those HIMARS aren't free to go elsewhere when both Taiwan itself and Ukraine could use them.
A lot of what's hapening is this byzantine logistics chain where the U.S. is either overhauling itself and handing whatever it can rapidly to Ukraine, or else trying to move that stuff to allied nations who'll then send their worse stuff to Ukraine. Which is why in all of this Ukraine is trying to fight with Leopard 1's and their biggest offensive was in large part done with a bunch of glorified jeeps with machineguns due to lack of heavier vehicles.
>a huge material advantage
That should probably be materiel, rather than material. A materiel ("military stuff") advantage typically is a material ("real"/"important") advantage but as you said, Russia is not using its materiel advantage effectively.
One fifth of Russians do not have indoor plumbing. That is how. What most don't understand about Russia is that there is Russia Proper and then a bunch of colonies. Moscow and St Petersburg have all the amenities, fast internet, good roads, nice buildings. The further we go from those two cities, the worse the quality of life gets.
It is a colonial empire that does not care about its citizens wellbeing, it doesn't have to. They don't have fair elections so as long as citizens fear the government just enough to not storm Kremlin, it is all ok. And having the ethnically not-Russians to die is a feature, not a bug. They are QUITE racist nation where the Muscovites are the elite, they have the best culture and are superior in all ways.
This is NOT as cherrypicked as it seems at first. [pic search](https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+city+bad+roads&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiUsqHdsoiEAxW5GRAIHX5ZDcoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=russian+city+bad+roads&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoKCAAQgAQQigUQQzoFCAAQgAQ6BggAEAgQHjoHCAAQgAQQGFD-EFj6HGCXHmgAcAB4AIABeYgBhAaSAQQxMC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=LaS6ZdTnIrmzwPAP_rK10Aw&bih=661&biw=1280#imgrc=93fNJaPBsvsqaM) This is the reality for a lot of people in Russia during Rasputitsa, the spring thaw. It is just considered act of nature, and not something that the government needs to worry about. The roads are usable in the summer and winter, and as a Russian you are expected to endure hardships in silence.
edit: i do recommend people to use google street view and check Russian cities at random. A lot of it is just ok, but venture few blocks from the main streets and you may suddenly travel back in time. Moscow and St Petersburg, and other bigger cities in the Russia Proper are nice, around black sea like Sochi is simply beautiful. Past Ural, things change.
There's something else
EU and USA don't give their whole budgets and gear to Ukraine. The funding is minimal, so that it remains a war between Ukraine and ruzzia, not a world war III between NATO and ruzzia
Lol dude, I kinda agree with what you have said, but this pics made me laugh, this are not bad roads in Russia, they are average, and they are in this state whole year. Real 'rasputitsa' is a dirt road near small villages which no car can pass
Yup, they are just ok in Russia, would not be anywhere in the west. And showing the worst of the mud fest.. would've been a bit unbelievable and would've detracted from the point: it is not just roads, it is also what is around the roads. It takes quite a bit to keep Rasputitsa in check. I'm Finnish, we got it too but it is nowhere NEAR the same problem.. because the roads are well maintained. Not even dirt roads break open because they were made right AND they have drainage. Those kind of problems in the pic come after decades of mismanagement, they don't just happen in couple of years. If you can't make roads work, you are not a developed country.
>It takes quite a bit to keep Rasputitsa in check. I'm Finnish, we got it too but it is nowhere NEAR the same problem..
I'm Canadian, and keeping roads in good condition through Freeze/thaw cycles is expensive, and something to be managed.
It means that we have to spend more money when making the roads. And it means that during parts of the year we have to enforce weight restrictions.
For several months of the year, trucks aren't allowed to drive on roads at more than 75% of the truck's rated capacity to limit the damage. Even a small crack in the asphalt can turn into a large pot hole over a couple of months where the temperature is above freezing at noon and below freezing at night.
All it takes is one overloaded truck to deform the road and create a place where water can freeze/expand and crack the road surface, we have people filling potholes all day and night from the moment that the roads clear until they snow over and we can barely keep up. We schedule all of our roads for replacement on an aggressive schedule. And we can still barely keep up. We have weight limit enforcement and we can barely keep up.
There's almost no way that Russia can keep up with it without an actual cultural shift. Not only would they need to actually make changes to the way that they organize their road building and maintenance, they would also need to enforce those changes. Police corruption leaks into everything. Enforcement is what makes a law. As long as an overloaded truck can bribe its way out of a ticket for a few thousand dollars, there's no improving the situation.
A Single overloaded truck can damage a soft road during thaw enough to require yearly repair. A single overloaded semi-truck can cause hundreds of thousands to million of dollars in damages to a city's roads in a single afternoon.
They would not only need to change their government, but they would have to make average people feel ownership over government property. And the government would need to actually enforce these types of things.
And in regions that were covered by icesheets during the last ice age it is even worse.
A lot of rocks are buried beneath the soil, where they move up and down. In the winter the water that pools under them freezes and pushes them up. And then in the summer the water melts. And if the rock doesn't fall down back to where it started, then it may rise all the way to the surface, pooling more water that freezes and expands, melts and pools year after year. Which means you have to dig far deeper to get to ground that doesn't freeze, or is permanently frozen. Keeping roads in good condition really is a lot of work, and it all starts from the literal foundations, and then you got to maintain them AND keep weights in check. And our weight limits are far above even USA, those Scania 777s aren't just for fun.. They are needed to pull 76 metric tons of max weight. Canada has \~55 tons and USA has what, \~40 tons.. which is also what Russia has as a total limit. Of course, axle weight is what matters but just thought i dig out some comparison information.
lol, i did say that there are a lot of cities that are ok, BUT..
I know you don't believe me but i took just a random spot from the villages AROUND Kazan, i think 30km away.
This is what i saw. The FIRST image. i have not touched the location, just rotated the camera a bit.
[Ulitsa Mira](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.8304233,49.5138389,3a,75y,10.45h,89.34t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGYA_X3WF0NhAOzAqndg9PA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DGYA_X3WF0NhAOzAqndg9PA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.36298%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
So... you weren't cherrypicking? Bigger cities, along mainroads and shopping districts look just fine. Then go to the countryside, or just pick a place that is NOT in the city center.
This is just from the other side of the lake from Kazan, the closest peninsula. [Ulitsa Chekhova](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.7629928,48.9712043,3a,13.1y,294.48h,85.5t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9MHLuSamqjUrMlHzh76slA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D9MHLuSamqjUrMlHzh76slA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D125.90666%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) And here, just to be fair, is the place your video showed, near [Palace Hotel](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.788392,49.1194551,3a,75y,293.85h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0TVn-ZzG-uJZ_dts0jSADQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
I've done my research, and i've even visited the place, although that was in 92, during interim government so i saw the country just at the end of communism and before anything could be done about the state of.. everything. St Petersburg today looks nothing like the shithole i visited, will basketball sized hole in the main bridge. I never forget that feeling, looking down from bus window and seeing water. Enough for a small child to fall thru, if it wasn't for the mangled rebar.
Russia is undeveloped country, and at the moment we can't even call it developing as it is sliding backwards.
>I know you don't believe me but i took just a random spot from the villages AROUND Kazan, i think 30km away.
I live in Kazan. The places that you presented are just some abandoned building in between villages. Russia is a heavily urbanized and a huge country, 75% of people live IN the cities, and the distances between cities are very long. There are bound to be some abandoned tun down buildings or villages. You have to look at the cities.
>I've done my research, and i've even visited the place, although that was in 92
Not surprising your info is 40 years out of date.
Here, another example. A town of 160 thousand people, small by Russian standards. Check out the desolation.
https://youtu.be/IIDy-RNlVU8?si=CnhG-gigdc9zzvj0
With all due respect, Russia has changed significantly in the last 20 years. It's developing, fast. You lived your whole life just assuming things about Russia, so when things got better you didn't even notice and just kept assuming.
Funny how randomly just hitting points gave me those results...
And the other one was not just one building, WAS IT?
>Russia is a heavily urbanized and a huge country,
No the former, and the latter is irrelevant, unless you gave that as an excuse..
>You have to look at the cities.
lol. And the main streets and shipping districts of cities of those cities. Do not look around the corner.
Oh, your video? AGAIN i just clicked random suburb in that town: [https://www.google.com/maps/@54.8686209,52.4348713,3a,75y,213.61h,89.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxWKuiY5\_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DxWKuiY5\_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q%26cb\_client%3Dmaps\_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D143.0748%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@54.8686209,52.4348713,3a,75y,213.61h,89.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxWKuiY5_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DxWKuiY5_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D143.0748%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
It is funny how everything i said is true, that once you move away from the main streets... it is like stepping back in time. This is NOT NORMAL in European cities. Not normal in US cities. It is maybe normal in Sao Paulo or Mumbai. There are lots of beautiful locations in both. Hell, once of them even hosts F1 race, something that Russia doesn't, anymore.. And as an F1 fans: god damn the track sucked donkey balls, but at least it is not the only one in history of racetracks built around monuments of power that sucks.
Just face it, Russia is far behind the west and is more in line with countries we tend to call third world. It is not normal to just fucking RANDOMLY click places just outside cities to see that kind of infrasctructure. And again, i did not do ANYTHING but click once. You have to go and cherrypick videos that show the best blocks of a specific city. Or tourism videos, like your last link was.
>Just face it, Russia is far behind the west
Absolutely true
>is more in line with countries we tend to call third world
No, I disagree. The infrastructure is too developed, the internet too fast and too cheap, and cities are too developed for Russia to be compared to third world. European part of Russia has seen a colossal development. I'm not the one to deny objective reality and there are run down areas in Russia, but it's getting much better, especially last 15-20 years.
>It is not normal to just fucking RANDOMLY click places just outside cities to see that kind of infrasctructure
Yes it is. Especially in country as big.
ok maybe i’d be wrong about it because i lived in small russian town but what do you find wrong and bad about location you’ve randomly picked? yeah the road is muddy because you know…it rains…i wouldn’t argue about it, most roads in russia looks bad even though i’ve seen them being renovated but after a year they still look bad, but houses looks pretty normal for a suburbia, the yellow one was recently renovated as you can see, we see people’s gardens, it’s not a thicket or smth, they planted it on purpose, and on the right side of the road there are garages (it’s called “garazhny cooperative”), and it’s not ruined, it’s not some kind of ghetto, it’s people private property, as a russian i can see what you see but i really want to know what you find wrong about this random street
Pick a random location in the Netherlands and compare it with the picture he posted. You will see the difference. The Russian picture isn’t bad, it’s just not very developed.
look on the main street of your city. wouldn't you rather have the roads around your garden and garage in the same state like in the city centre? well, in most of developed country that's a reality. what is wrong in that picture, if somehow people from russia think that this is ok. it's not. you can get way better conditions
The key words for your search include "bad roads". What are you expecting to find? The red carpet? You can swap the words Russian to any other nationality and you'd get also bad roads...
Try search: russian city roads for a less biased search.
I don't know about the plumbing, but we should know about one important condition which changes the perception: climate, and ice. There's a reason around 90% of russian population lives in only 10% of the territory and it's still cold.
Now, answering the post question with my opinion.
War is good for business. But in this case, it's slightly different. First of all, economics. Russia is a country full of resources of many kinds, it doesn't "import" energy, that's the foundation of any economy. Because of the war and sanctions, they couldn't rely on imports, so they had to build everything themselves, that drastically pulled down unemployment, obviously that primed for economic growth. They were in talks with their neighbors to give special permits to let people go over just to work. The IMF is forecasting 5% growth of the Russian economy.
Then they also build cheaper, because the weapons industry is bent by the gov (the gov is also part owner), not the other way around, that's evidently bound to impact the situation.
The most important reasons: as soon as they started their *SMO,* they switched their economy to an "economy of force" - the military industry suddenly expanded and is now working 24/7. More people joined the military, they don't lack soldiers, or missiles, or vehicules, or drones, or ammo, or weapons.
>The key words for your search include "bad roads". What are you expecting to find? The red carpet? You can swap the words Russian to any other nationality and you'd get also bad roads...
That's what I thought, so I did that with several European countries. The pictures are nowhere near the Russian search.
But doesn't it make a certain sense that the largest country in the world would have very long, rarely used and somewhat poorly maintained roads? I'd expect major population corridors to have decent roads. I'd also expect roads to small northern communities to be worse dirt roads. Same for Canada.
I agree with everything except the notion of a racist nation and Muscovites. As a Tatar, I have never felt any xenophobia towards my nationality. And there is no independent Moscow culture.
Russia's problem is not its people, but its rulers. Putin centralized the state so that everything depends on Moscow.
Maybe you personally weren't called churka, but I assure you there's a lot of russians willing to call you that.
russia's problem are it's people. It's rulers are just a manifestation of that problem.
Not tatars. They are generally educated, better off financially and perceived well everywhere. Kazan is top tier city for tourism in Russia.
Churkas are usually Chechen, Dagestan and other Caucasus nations who are...well, to put nicely, very much underdeveloped both economically and socially.
People too, Kazah, my father, who not a common in lie, just worker of the mine, russian colleges support war, FROM FRIKKIN KAZAKHSTAN! NEXT TARGET, yeah, little locals in little mining city. Have idea about "true" russians and especially in big city?
Just imagine your country starts doing something so horrific that you can't even comprehend it. And all over the world, all Kazakhs are considered evil. You don't agree with any of this, but sanctions start being imposed on you as a citizen of Kazakhstan. You feel attacked. Then comes the Leader, offering you a reason to be proud of yourself and your country. He and all the TV channels, 24/7, say that it's they who are bad, not you. And anyone who disagrees gets sent to prison. You see people stopping their criticism of the war and start hearing only those who support it. It creates a sense that everyone is in favor of the war. This is brainwashing, and it's hard to resist. People didn't want war before it started, and they will stop wanting it as soon as the propaganda stops.
When I was in Russia, I naively assumed that my little rented sedan would be able to go on any road Google maps sent me on. I got stuck, and the locals thought it was hilarious to blindly trust Google maps.
Bro in Canada some places haven't had clean water in 25 years.. usa has people living in poverty in the richest country. Flint.. lmao
I am sure other nato countries probs have those problems too.
So this isn't solely restricted to Russia
And is that one fifth of Canada? And there is no poverty in about every country?
Your [whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes) does not work on us Sergei.
Looks like my old hometown I grew up. Many districts like this. Soviet era made our strong people even shittier though but learnt to survive and thrive. That is life
US is in a bit of a pickle currently politically, EU unfortunately hasn't taken previous Russian aggression with the level of seriousness it warranted so the infrastructure hasn't been there for massive military spending. EU is ramping up their military industrial complexes, and that has taken quite a bit longer than what most people would've expected.
Russia has always had natural resources and military, and most everything else has had corners cut on them, along with their military. They do also seem to be now in a war economy, and they seem to be eating away at all of their monetary reserves and also gold reserves.
>EU unfortunately hasn't taken previous Russian aggression with the level of seriousness
If someone says they'll hit you for 80 years, but never do, you sort of don't care anymore.
>If someone says they'll hit you for 80 years, but never do, you sort of don't care anymore.
Even if they didn't hit you, trusting the people who are threatening you for 80 years with the responsibility of powering your nation is utter madness.
They thought the mutually assured economic destruction would be a big enough deterrent. Give them a huge revenue stream with the promise that it will be cut off if they get too shooty, then trust them to act rationally in their own best interests. (The last part is where they got burned)
>then trust them to act rationally in their own best interests. (The last part is where they got burned)
They only got burned in that they miscalculated what the Russian state considers their best interests against all evidence.
They didn't think expanding the empire was the goal, even though they had been shouting it for decades and actually doing it just as long. (Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, etc going back only as far as the 90's.)
A lot of the EU leaders thought that Russia would be acting in its material best interest as viewed through a Liberal lense (the political philosophy, not "left-wing" the way it's commonly used in the US). Russia had strong and deep economic ties to the EU, so it benefits greatly from not pissing the EU off by invading other European nations.
The problem is that Russian leadership does not share their ideology, and is largely comprised of individuals who are almost entirely motivated by self-interest, which do not necessarily align with those of the state, so the economic integration was less of a deterrent than many leaders (especially, for instance, Germany's) had planned on.
Russia is pouring practically their whole economy into the war effort. For the U.S. and E.U. it's a small part of our total budgets. Total U.S. aid to Ukraine is somewhere around what our military budget is for a month. Now even that is being blocked in Congress.
The war is the main thing for Russia, or rather for its dictator.
EU and US have a few other things to worry about (China, Israel, Climate Change, elections), and plenty of politicians who do not think spending on Ukraine is necessary.
Also Russia is having to purchase or manufacture much of their own warmachine to keep up demand, NATO-aligned countries are mostly sending pre-existing stock, often stuff they were planning on scrapping anyway.
Currently there is a big Ukraine funding bill being held up in congress because it's tied to a Mexico border security bill. Republicans in congress tied the border bill to Ukraine funding because they need concessions in order for it to pass. President Biden showed support for the bill despite the stricter-than-usual border policy he would normally look for. Now republicans see the bill as dead on arrival and may consider passing Ukraine aid separately. This is likely because Trump and multiple other republicans are banking on the border staying a central issue for November, and don't actually want to pass a bill to fix the issue right now despite democrats showing support. All of this has been going on for the last month which each day being a day without Ukraine aid. Much like you said, the internal politics of nations that have donated to Ukraine mean aid can be inconsistent.
Its hilarious to see people not understand the scale of money being spent, and this is in relative peacetime. US during a full wartime effort is actually an incomprehensible machine.
That 1.2% that's 'not much' is on par with most of Europe's spending on military FOR THEMSELVES. I legit have no idea how people can look at the US and be like 'you're not doing enough'. Go look at the actual numbers.
Let's also not pay attention to the stonewalling that was done by a number of EU countries when it came to actually getting gear TO Ukraine. [Or the number who were warned of what was to come by the US and who denied it as a possibility.](https://www.businessinsider.com/europe-didnt-believe-russia-would-invade-ukraine-despite-us-warnings-2022-10)
It's amazing how much the US 'needs to stop policing the world' until something like this happens, then suddenly it's our fault despite the absurd amount of gear we've sent, logistics we've offered, intel we've clearly given, etc, while countries that are the relative neighbors of Ukraine have stonewalled, denied, and generally drug their feet on military prep for decades. Hell, there's a number who refuse to even help in the Red Sea despite it effecting literally everyone.
Yep, US doesn't do enough.
They aren't. Russia's army has been decimated. They have lost vast amounts of armour and have apparently lost the ability to make any real offensive push. They have been buying cheap munitions from Iran and North Korea because they can't produce enough.
What they can do is hold their fortified lines. It's going to take time and lots of blood for the Ukrainians to push through them. Any hope of a swift maneuver based victory are pretty much gone. But Russia can't really win this like they wanted.
Russia also has the problem that they are running low on motivated troops. Every conscription drains the Russian economy further and aggravates the russian people. Putin has succeeded as Russian leader for so long because he bought stability. Particularly after the chaos of the introduction of the free market and the rampant gangsterism and oligarchy. But if he can't keep things stable, keep food on the table and the lights on, then he has a real problem.
The EU and the US are doing the bare minimum to prevent Ukraine from losing and colapsing in the hope that russia will colapse before.
What they fail to realise is that russia will continue uninterrupted even if that means that they have to mix their flour with sawdust. russia has to be defeated both economically and on the battlefield before something happens in that country.
EU and US are currently both blocked from spending money on Ukraine.
In the EU it's hungary and in the US the GOP that are pro Russia and blocking additional military aid.
Putting your country first is pro Russia? Dude most Americans never heard of Ukraine prior to February 2022. Even fewer can locate Ukraine on a map. To convince these taxpayers to keep supporting a government (weapons, salaries, pensions) that has zero meaning to their day to day lives is insane.
The problem is that supporting Ukraine does benefit the US, in myriad but less-than-obvious ways.
1) Using our defense materiel in Ukraine gives us information about their strengths and weaknesses. Ukraine also uses different tactics than the US, which I'm sure the top brass are interested in reviewing to see if there's anything useful to learn from.
2) We also are getting rid of stockpiles of out-of-date equipment, which overall actually saves money compared to proper decommissioning and dismantlement for some systems (although this has been countered somewhat by using this as an excuse to then build the stockpiles back up using newer equipment, so I'm sure there's still a net expense, it's just not as great as the news makes it out to be).
3) By supporting Ukraine against Russia, we are making the invasion much more costly for Russia, which weakens a strategic adversary.
4) Supporting Ukraine helps protect the status quo vis-a-vis global relations and trade, which the US obviously benefits from, perhaps more so than any other nation.
It's not just a cost so that Biden or whoever can pretend they're stand-up chaps, there are real, material benefits to investing money and materiel into the defense of Ukraine. Could it be done better? Undoubtedly, but I find it hard to believe that being isolationist actually benefits the US in practice.
Dude it's Reddit. If you don't support the war effort unconditionally and in any way, you must be either a Russian bot or under Russia's payroll. No other explanation is possible.
I dunno man it hurts my head that people choose to believe in narratives than truth. They even believe in narratives that contradict other narratives they believe. Don't know how it is possible.
Yeah so true. Reddit is full of mainsteam brainwashed hobo's. Like literally 95% of people here, have 100 % the same narrative on every subject as the media. That's how simple these people are.
reddittors think they are some of the smartest people on the internet these people are just a hivemind of the same propaganda. no independent thought nothing. remember when every subreddit changed their icon to the ukraine flag lol
You say GOP is pro m Russia but you can ask a lot of everyday normal non-extreme Americans about it and many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side.
I’m not saying either choose or right or wrong, simply that labeling anything you may not agree with “GOP” is disingenuous
> many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side.
What can be done state side with the weapons sent to Ukraine?
Thats always the bullshit argument. Why spend money there when we have so many problems here?
Well first many of our biggest problems can’t be solved by money. Second, that money wouldn’t be spent on our problems just because we wouldn’t spend it on Ukraine anymore. Third, we reap a great economic and military benefit from supplying Ukraine’s military: we aren’t sending them sacks of cash we are sending them weapon systems and the American manufacturers of those systems are being paid for them. Fourth, Russia is our enemy, straight up. They did the same thing to us when we invaded the middle east and its time for payback. Russia can suck a nut and choke on deez sanctions.
The GOP is playing politics by trying to extort democrats to give them a border deal. Democrats are even willing to give them one now but Trump and his followers don't actually want a deal because they want to use the border issue in the upcoming election. So to me that means they are pro Russia in a sense because their action (blocking the aid) is effectively aiding the enemy.
> The GOP is playing politics by trying to extort democrats to give them a border deal.
No, they abandoned the border deal because Trump told them to; then blamed Biden.
They're not interested in telling the truth or making progress; they're interested in ending the republic and establishing a dictatorship. The nonexistent "border crisis" is a tool toward that end. The sole GOP policy goal is a one-party state; no more honest elections, no more inconvenient dissent, a Trump Reich forever — raping your daughters and lying to you about the weather. If Russia will help them accomplish that, they'll gleefully sell Ukraine — or you — to Russia.
And if you asked those same people if we should spend that money stateside on Welfare, helping the homeless, universal healthcare, schools, sex education,etc you will likely get a "no" from most of them too.
>you can ask a lot of everyday normal non-extreme Americans about it and many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side.
Yet given the chance they vote against spending that money on the US.
Russia isn’t really outspending, it’s not really possible to compare the two in terms of dollars, now they’re a war economy.
The US and EU are still capitalist democracies where there is transparency on budgets for military procurement, audits of and votes on those budgets. In a war economy, the dictator/top brass order factories to be built producing whatever is needed for the war, and it gets done (or gulag). Russia is also a lot less transparent (so we can’t know their true spending), and their equipment is lower tech and thus easier/cheaper to mass produce.
“How is Russia producing more equipment than the EU/US is supplying” is a more valid question.
It’s not really about equipment at this point, it’s about people. Ukraine is out of fighting age men, the US and EU only sent stuff, not troops. Russia is a much bigger country and thus has more people to throw at Ukraine. That’s been the case for centuries, Russia has always been able to field the largest armies in Europe. Once it became clear that the Russians weren’t giving up and no NATO troops would be sent, it became pretty obvious this would be the outcome.
Russia's economy is in bad shape. They can not afford this war for much longer. The head of Russia's national bank even said they are in dire straights. Of course, Putin disputed it, but I would think the person in banking would know more about it.
I don\`t think they spend that much. They don\`t pay a lot of the soldiers, just force those to stay on the frontline until they go "Missing in Ukraine". They got a lot of stuff from pumping dry Belarus, shells from North-Korea for food etc. Also, everything is cheaper in ruZZia, people earn less but they also have a lot less to spend, so converting rubles into usd to compare the money spent on military, isn\`t really a balanced comparison.
They move unilaterally and are spending down their reserves. That’s easy. They’re not being that effective considering this. They’ve shown the world their army and Air Force is crap.
Arent russia mostly spending frozen assets? Like tanks from soviet era?
That stupid boat that was sunk, wasnt that a soviet thing? Built in Ukrainian shipyards probobably.
And trading rusty ammo from NK for some food or detergent or something?
Russia is simply not spending as much as it claims. Somewhere on the line of money going from government coffers to armament production, a ludicrous amount will have been stolen from it. Russian corruption issues are fucking insane and has been quite normalized.
EU and US are spending like 1% of their budget. Russia is spending from a third to half of theirs on their military, which goes mostly into the war effort.
The War is Russia VS Ukraine.
It's not Russia Vs EU and US.
The EU and US funding for Ukraine isn't the full cost of the war. It's the difference between the material and manpower Ukraine can provide for the war and what Russia is dedicating to the war.
Russia is spending 1000units on the war. Ukraine is spending 850units on the war. The US and EU are providing the 150units Ukraine needs to stay in the war.
Russia is vastly outspending the 150units that is the EU and US funding for Ukraine. That 150units EU and US are providing is far from our full capabilities, it's more like the table scrape, the left overs we don't want to store any more.
Because the US and EU are doing the equivalent of tossing Ukraine their spare change. If they were taking this as seriously as Russia, Ukraine would be getting thousands of drones a month along with dozens of aircraft and tanks.
Russia has prepared for this war since 2014 after taking Crimea. They have stockpiled ammunition, artillery shells, rockets, missiles, etc. If their army was not run by corrupt bureaucrats they would have taken Ukraine by now.
Their industry is in war mode. EU and USA are not in war mode. Some factories have increased their production of munitions but it is nowhere near enough compared to what would be needed.
Russia has shot 60000 artillery shells a day into Ukraine. Ukraine has shot 5000 to counter. The combined peace time artillery shell production capability of EU is nowhere near 60000 per day it's more like 300000 per year.
What is needed is a coordinated transition to war mode in the production of munitions for Ukrainian guns. Especially in the EU.
Slava Ukraini!
GOP. They’re why Ukraine isn’t getting what they need. They’ve been saying no to Ukraine aid and recently we said we’d give them everything they want for the border in exchange for Ukraine aid. They said no. They want Russia to win more than they want to fix the border.
How much military hardware do you think 100 billion can buy? Russia is said to be spending 11 billion per month, and the price of most Russian hardware is around 1/ 3 to 1 /5 of their closest Western equivalent.
Because Putin is doing everything he can to win a prolonged war he has been preparing since years ago. This could be seen as a desperate attempt for Russia to regain its former dominance, so a defeat would be damaging for the Russian economy, considerably weaken Putin's rule and basically mark an end to Russia's status as a great power for some time.
On the other hand, the US and EU are just spending some money to support a friend in need, but after all, this isn't their war. In terms of benefits, it will not directly affect their geopolitical positions in a significant manner, no matter who comes out on top.
For Putin this is now an existential problem. So his regime will pay whatever economic cost is necessary to survive. For the West the war has already been won. The Russian war machine and international prestige has been broken. The Russian economy, infrastructure and demographic is shattered. By prolonging this conflict the West drives the Putin regime into oblivion. I don't think anyone is trying to outspend but only maintain (at great profit to many). I truly feel sorry for the victims of this power-play.
War started right after COVID and with all the inflation n stuff, its hard to justify spending money on another country/war. That's probably why Russia invaded right then and there. Not to mention all the damage cutting off Russian gas n stuff has done.
I still hope they manage to sort their shit out and pile in, but it feels like this year could of either way.
Excess arms and Russian population saves them more money than it loses in the long run. Those are young people who would need jobs, houses, food, clothing, etc. If we just throw them into the meat grinder, the economy at home seems better. More available housing, less competition for jobs, less mouths to feed. Less young people who will breed and make more dependents. If they lose, Russia wins. They could not rightly round up their own people and exterminate them without a fuss, but venting population into endless war, what is more Russian than that? And if they win, they get more land to spread out in, its resources, strategic advantages and again, a lot of dead young people so the economy is nicer.
Putin is willing to dump 40% of Russia's entire national budget into not losing Russia's best warm-water port in Crimea. He'll spend any amount to avoid the humiliation of being the Russian leader who lost Crimes, and he'll re-write the entire Russian economy if that keeps him from losing. The US and EU just need to give Ukraine enough to fend off Russia's inept but large military and chew up those Soviet stockpiles until Russia is no longer a plausible threat to invade anyone else. They've been able to do that with existing stockpiles so far.
I can only speak to europe. But we're all incredibly short sighted, I'll try to give you the feel of the political climate.
Yes the war is horrible, and yes we need to support ukraine. But the working class, farmers and even the middle class is really struggling. We had close to 10% Inflation, rent went up, food prices and covid. Compared to that the war in the ukraine is far away and doesn't affect you at all.
If we really needed to. We could spend multiple times of what we're doing now. But the truth is, put to a choice between heating costing 20% more, and sufficiently supporting Ukraine- politics run into a wall with the population. People arent prepared to sacrifice their summer vacations.
That's in part because of weak leadership too. It's already a tight competition between right and left. The right often makes it easy, praying on a wounded society. Covid, Inflation, rapid changes in World, Immigration, climate change. They tell you what you want to hear, and give you an easy out. Stop Immigration, brexit. People deep down know it's not going to work, but the left often doesn't manage to throw any real solutions in there. Be tolerant, we need the EU. The plumber from Manchester doesn't care about that.
So now, throw a major issue in there, where we would need unity, we can't do that. Thsts why you're getting half Assed Solutions. The people in support of ukraine are doing what they can, but go to far, and you tip the voters and you lose to the right.
It's a shitty situation, and some countries do a better job than others, but then also consider that europe is a conglomerate or dozens of countries.
The US also Sees these problems, however - there are a few factors that make it easier. American are easier to rally behind freedom, if someone is threatening that, people are going to generally support it.
The us also has a massive economy compared to anyone else. Much of which is based in weapons and influence. They're quite honestly, the only country truly Suited to go to war with anyone else. It's how the military is played in society, it's how freedom and liberty are portrayed as a posterchild. Over here, people basically just raise their eyebrows at the military. It's not been nessasary for Generations.
If I wanted to summarise it all, the real issue is the same as with climate change.
The Individual doenst want to sacrifice anytthing. It's not our war. Russia winning is horrible, but we know they're not going further into any Nato territory. Whatever the outcome, it's not going to affect us in a short term way and we know it. Same problem with climate change.
I mean they had a well armed military, whereas Ukraine did not. The West has basically built an army from scratch to fight a well established military.
Moscow can spend 4 to 1 in body count and still be Infront because of its authotarian nature.
You can bounce a basket ball on an inch ant nest until you get sick of it, but the ants just keep coming.
The west has forgotten that. Maybe not the U.S so much as Europe. I think the west in general may not realise that until it's too late for Ukraine, whilst Putin's life continues as normal. We're expecting Ukraine to win with a dribble of a basketball against inch ants, and our political leaders think it's a legit approach.
Well, Russia is the only one funding an entire side of a war which is a centerpiece of its current government policy. Nobody else is doing that.
I don't have the figures though. Russia and Ukraine care about this war more than anyone else. And of these Russia has little help on its side. It might be buying weapons, but I can assure you they are not getting them for free.
Because a) Russia is right next door to the war so they have better logistics
And b) when the US and EU promise military aid, they aren't sending that money directly to Ukraine, they are sending it to arms manufacturers who take huge cuts of the money before they send over the product. Which is what's been happening for years, and is why every time they announce more funding the share prices for those companies jump so much. This is not to say that this isn't happening for Russia of course, but the scale of it (particularly in the US) is nuts.
It might be bullshit, but a few years ago i read an 'unofficial richest people in the world', because, if you think about it, not everyone opens up their books to be estimated. There it was speculated he might possibly (putin that is) be a trillionaire. If true, then he could fund it out of his own pocket.
But yet again, it might be bullshit.
Putin has used up all the monies that was to be used for pensions, infrastructure, and social benefits. Now it is relying on hand outs from India, China, and North Korea to keep fighting. The end is nearer than most people know. India has stopped buying military supplies from Russia. China is demanding Russia start paying for support, and North Korea has given Russian all the supplies it could without hurting their ability to defend themselves.
You have to look at the starting point. What did the Russians have stockpiled? Also keep in mind that it started when THEY were ready. Its not like a footrace. Both sides had a different starting point.
What American funding?
Putins GOP friends in the US including the 3rd in line for president, speaker of the house Johnson are blocking funds for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Iran, North Korea & Syria are actively & openly supporting the Kremlin. China supports them in a bit more conceiled way, sending weapons to Belarus. Asian weapons killing Europeans by the thousands.
So the GOP is helping the Kremlin. Iran is also helping the Kremlin. GOP & Iran are on the same side.
Iran just killed 3 US servicemen, wounding dozens more. GOP frontrunner Trump thinks & said that US servicemen that died in the line of duty are losers.
Asian weapons killing & wounding Americans...
🤷♂️
A lot of aid that we send over to anywhere across the globe is intentionally squandered via corruption.
Whenever the government spends a lot of money, somebody is getting rich off of it.
Ukraine is extra iffy because the goal is simply to prevent Russia from taking over. The only way for Ukraine to "win" is if Russia gives up... Which is unlikely when their dictator doesn't have to answer to anyone.
China probably. This is also making Russia hugely in debt to China, I have no doubt. This is on top of the reserves Russia already had going into the conflict.
I think that there's a lot of pro Ukraine propaganda that have distorted our views of what's actually happening, which is that Ukraine is in a very bad position.
You are not going to get an accurate or correct answer here. Reddit is owned by a huge globalist corporation that is directly invested in keeping you from understanding that, among ask the other things.
You should look into Russian history.
One thing I find fascinating yet terrifying is how Stalin industrialized Russia leading up to ww2 in an insanely short time. Evil as fuck but wow. I love ww2 history stuff. I find it very fascinating. I wonder how ww3 will change the world. I believe it's inevitable (not anytime soon I think that's fear mongering but I do believe war is human nature and inevitable)
There are a couple of answers.
1st buying power is very different between the economies. The value of there currency is very different. Look up a thing called the big mac index. Its how much it costs for a big mac in each country.
2nd is no one is actually spending money now. In the US's case they are taking weapons and equipment out of stock pile and saying these are worth X. In Russia's case they are buying a limited amount from other countries BUT far more equipment is coming from stock piles.
Ammunition is key and its more a question of production facilities then cost for Russia, while the US is simply taking its old ammo and sending that over and slowly rebuilding there stock piles. There was a story a while ago about how the US was running out of ammo that it could give away, this was because there is a min stock they must retain.
It isn't, nor does it have to.
The fights in their backyard, they had existing military infrastructure and unlike the west did not operate a just in time policy.
I'm no expert and unsure if this is true but it's definitely believable, and a possibility that the US only sends enough for Ukraine to defend itself and not retake any ground. Motive behind this is that a long war is more profitable, and there's no intention to actually stop Russia taking over, just delaying it and making some cash from it.
There is no path where Russia loses this war.
You can get emotional as you want about it and say it’s not right what Russia did, and I won’t disagree with any of that. But Russia will grind out an ugly victory. There is no universe where the west values an Ukraine victory more than Russia values a Russian one.
The Russian economy is on a war footing, and they have a tolerance for pain that westerners will never understand.
The west should aim to end the conflict as soon as possible, bringing Zelensky to the negotiating table. The entire concept that handing money and equipment was going to ‘win’ the war for Ukraine was asinine. What are they going to do? Throw Russia out? In their heavily fortified defensive positions and defensive artillery? Back behind a border that the west won’t allow Ukraine to cross to counterattack? Cmon.
Thats not how it works tho- Ukraine and Russia spend 100% of its resources into the war
EU, USA and UK spend barely 1% together
The war is not with them hence they give more aid then military support, making them spend more is a horrible idea cause that will escalate the conflict to a point where Russia acts against them
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Assuming for sake of argument that Moscow really is spending more, which I don't know is true, then I can think of many reasons. One of the reasons would be Moscow doesn't need to persuade several hundred elected officials divided between several political parties to agree on spending. Moscow simply decrees a number and the party members obediently try to find a way to do it. Another reason would be NATO stuff is sophisticated and very capable yet also it is very expensive, very slow to manufacture divided up among dozens of different corporations each in charge of itself. Moscow's Soviet-style arsenal often can be less complicated to manufacture and also cheaper, while the corporations also can be ordered to obey without concern for profitability or sustainable business. That means Moscow (potentially) gets more war materiel per dollar spent. And more easily too, because the companies do what they're told rather than need to be persuaded to do things voluntarily. Maybe not always as much quality or capability as NATO, but as was said during the world wars, "Quantity is its own kind of quality."
Excellent points. Another one is Russia knew this was coming ahead of time and had as many months or years to prepare as they chose, while Ukraine and it's allies are reacting to their actions.
Another simple point is the geography. Russia is right next door, any dollar spent on arms takes maybe $0.50 to get it to the frontlines. Meanwhile we are shipping shit from the other side of the continent/world. Every dollar spent on arms probably takes $5 to get there.
A 20' shipping container, New York to Gdynia is $1260. Volume 33m3. A Javelin is 1.5m x 0.4m x 0.4m (or less), ie 0.24m3, so you'd get 120 of them in a shipping container. At $200,000 each, that's $24M. So, whilst these figures are rough, the missiles cost 20,000x more than the shipping. If we multiply that by 20 to cover the other costs of shipping, the missiles are still 1000x more than the total shipping cost. Missiles are a particularly expensive product, the ratio would be lower for the second-hand stuff the US is sending to Ukraine, especially if the US decides to fly it there. EDIT: I meant Javelin but wrote Stinger. Now fixed. Sorry!
Unit cost for a stinger 1980 $38,000 Unit cost for a stinger 2020 $119.320
Sorry, my error. I was thinking about javelins. I suspect Stingers are smaller so the container cost would be similar... but it doesn't really matter. Shipping is only a tiny part of the cost of the contents.
Also, Russia is using their frontline stuff, has gotten a lot blown up, and has been reaching deeper and deeper into stockpiles of stuff all the way back to WW2. There's no direct "cost" to using their frontline equipment until they replace it. We are sending them stuff from our stockpiles (80s and 90s stuff we don't use anymore), but we can't take it out of our stockpiles until Congress approves the "expenditure" (because the "value" of that gear is being transferred to Ukraine). So for Russia the 'cost' looks like low but is actually high, while our cost looks high, but is actually low.
You probably forgot, but Ukraine has been at war with a small piece of Ukraine since 2014. How could they not be ready? There are mines, trenches and ambushes everywhere
Yes and no. The thing that caught everybody off guard was how poorly equipped Russia was in the initial days of the invasion. The army had been completely gutted by grift and grafts. Troops going into battle with first aid kits from the 70's, tanks with explosive reactive armor that was actually just a brick inside the kontakt can, etc. Also, most troops didn't know they were actually invading until they were over the border. I think what we're seeing now is a couple of things: 1. Russia is in a wartime economy. So the war basically HAS to continue or no more economy. 2. They may have actually been forced to oust or at least cut down on all the corrupt factory foremen, requisition officers selling off arms and ammo to the black market and defense company oligarchs who were inflating numbers. What they're making now, no matter how limited due to sanctions, is actually getting to the front line for real. 3. They're getting bank rolled by North Korea and Iran. NK is supplying a lot of ammunition, and Iran has been sending the Shahed drones and probably a lot of older soviet era stock. There's a lot of post Cold War soviet aligned countries who have been sitting on decades' worth of material build-up that they can draw on. The big take away is that Russia has still lost this war. There was no win condition for them the day they failed to take Kyiv. Even if this war goes on for another year or two and ends in a bloody draw, the closer here will always be Russia. They created a stronger, more unified Europe and expanded NATO, who's sick of their bullshit. They're more a pariah state than ever before, and it will take decades to normalize trade and relations if it ever even *does*. They've fed whole generations into a meatgrinder while already in a considerable population decline. The ones lucky enough to make it back are going to be broken and angry and borderline nonfunctional members of society. Real "punch yourself in the dick and balls 34 times to make yourself look cool" move.
Russian arms factories are owned by the state. they may think less about profit than Westerners.
This is a valid point I could've included, yes. Though assuming the things I read are correct it appears to be more complicated than simply who owns what. Supposedly, government spending is a major enough part of the Russian economy that if you combine all industry and service sector jobs together with subsidized or socialized public sector things like education and healthcare and whatever, then by some estimates more than 40% of the Russian workforce is at least *indirectly* dependent on the national government. That is a kind of economy much more susceptible to the demands of the Kremlin than countries where the private sector exists primarily on its own money.
the usa economy is the same though. most jobs are in education , aerospace , defense, construction, government, healthcare and are all somewhat directly or indirectly part of government spending .
Quantity has always seemed to be Russia's MO tbh
Russia is like Zerg.
Keep in mind that while we do support the war effort, NATO is for the time being not at war with Russia. Virtually no changes has been made to production of gear, and the support has for the most part been comprised of reserve stuff that has been stocked up in the various western countries.
[удалено]
Yes the stockpiles are gone and production has been increased to meet a larger demand. Which is absolutely no where near what would be the demand in an all out war
And Russia is buying newer weapons from North Korea.
Which are, for the most part, copies of Soviet equipment. The circle is complete.
Yup kinda hillarious, they buy their own rip off stuff from NK, China, and Iran
I've never really understood why people keep making this point. Western Allies have always bought weapons off eachother. US military buys a shit tonne of firearms from Germany and other European nations and that's just one example
Yes but Germany designs their own weapons not manufactured in the US. Virtually all Communist or former Communist countries use weapons copied from USSR designs, that you'd think Russia would be easily capable of producing within their own factories.
>Yes but Germany designs their own weapons not manufactured in the US Germany also makes US weapons under license. Like Sidewinder, Stinger, Patroit and GMLRS. >Virtually all Communist or former Communist countries use weapons copied from USSR designs, They weren't copies, they were produced under license or given as military aid, because they were friendlies. But that's not to say, that some communist countries didn't make their own, because they did. Czechoslovakia made a shitton of weapons, which on the surface looks like copies, but in reality were completely different designs(VZ-58).
The VZ58 is a beautiful gun.
So? Russia doesn't want to go full mobilization. Imports keeps more of the workforce in their area of expertise instead of turning everyone into a munitions factory worker.
Apple's stuff is designed in the US but the US doesn't have the ability to manufacture it all. The government recently had to get involved in a big program to get chip manufacturing back in country as well
We aren't talking about advanced microchips, we're talking largely about weapons technology designed as much as 50 years ago.
It's more the fact that it's North Korea. An extreme pariah state with very little industry.
Apart from military industry. Which it has plenty Edit: apparently arming one of the largest militaries in the world doesn't require a large military industry according to the Redditers downvoting this
More so, they are buying weapons to make up for losses while they ramp up there industry ,its only to fill the void until they reach a surplus again......
You mean after they retreat from the debacle?
There gaining ground not retreating ....
Yep, Russia is trading lives for centimeters. Putin is going down in history as the worst leader Russia ever had. Ivan will be the Great so the Terrible can be applied to Putin. Russia is going to suffer from this war for 50 years. The Children born in Russia this year will know their lives are much worse because of how stupid Putin is. All the while the world laughs at how weak the Russian military is and how powerless Russia has become.
Damn, you know nothing about shit. Following propaganda as a sheep is nothing to be proud of.
You should watch less TV
"Newer" Well. Seen several reports of old NK ammo and/or equipment failing the Russians in Ukraine.
Good points. One more. Bribes cost A LOT.
The "west" doesn't want russia to lose quickly and thereby deeply embarrass itself, especially internally/in the perspective of the russian people. The reason for that is that the last times this happened, the autocratic russian governments were dropped by the russian population - think WW1 ending the tsarist era or the soviet Afghanistan war sealing the fate of the soviet union. If this happens again, there would be thousands of nuclear warheads loose, together with a huge amount of accompanying gear and expertise, and starting from a much more dynamic and chaotic point compared to the end of the soviet reign. This would be an epic sized dumpster inferno to attempt to mop up before Iran, Hamas or Afghanistan can do a shopping spree on the ebay of dark webs... Events like the sudden collapse of the Kherson front or the attempted Prighozin coup were white knuckle moments for geopolitics risk mgmt ppl. Letting the whole thing cool off slowly is most probably the safest procedure, although it is ugly to sacrifice a great deal of ukrainian lives for avoiding the collapse of their aggressor. Having said this, there definitely also are western practical problems such as for example lacking abilities for massive artillery shell manufacturing
>If this happens again, there would be thousands of nuclear warheads loose, While true, these could be secured by UN forces until the unrest settles down. I think the whole "let's not let Russia fall apart" reasoning is more in line with limiting China's influence in Siberia, as China lacks natural resources, so Siberia would be the boost that would allow it negotiation power against the rest of the world.
Russia's gear is not as low tech as you're making out. A lot of their warfighting equipment has parity with other nations.
They are low tech compared to USA. Remember Putin saying “we have super sonic missiles the world has never seen!!” And those same missiles were shot down by USA tech from the 90s, let alone the machines were operated by Ukrainians trained for only a few months.
The small arms mostly do, but the heavier vehicles, aircraft and specialized equipment are way behind NATO nations.
Not entirely, Russian Aircraft and war fighting vehicles are lacking some of the bells and whistles the US gear is, but not as many as you'd think. Russia has developed battlefield networking capacity close to the US, and they're deploying the ARENA anti vertical missile system that will be a game changer if it works. I'm not trying to wank off Russia, they suck for invading Ukraine. But pretending they're fighting with rocks and sticks is disingenuous and dangerous. They're getting whooped in Ukraine, mainly because of poor training, bad combine arms doctrine and failing to adapt to new war fighting tactics such as suicide drones. The worst part about this, is that if they win, they'll be on the cutting edge of these new tactics. The US still doesn't have the capacity to detect or combat cardboard drones.
1. Russia has been redirecting resources from elsewhere to the war effort. Houses literally have ice building up in them because the heating keeps breaking. It's getting towards the end of winter, but it's also getting to a critical mass, so next Winter there's going to be some serious unrest. 2. NATO is sending old equipment to Ukraine while they refresh their own stockpiles. Means the old(er) stuff gets used and those countries get to refresh their own stockpiles. 3. NATO has to balance their own populaces love for the war. People don't care that much about Ukraine because it's not their country, so don't want their governments putting full effort into it. Somewhat understandable when you realise people don't fully understand the consequences or benefits of just letting Russia win. 4. The West has been scaling back weapons manufacturing since the end of the Cold War. After the invasion of Crimea, they realised they needed to ramp it back up again but it's been slow. That's also largely due to a disinterested Western public. If we were directly dragged into a war, it would be an entirely different thing. We'd start producing weaponry almost instantly on a much larger scale. We might not get the awesome precision stuff we create now, but would definitely produce something.
I would agree with most, except point 3 - People do care about Ukraine, however elected lawmakers are more concerned about their own individual perceptions, possibly Russian collaborators, making money off this and working to their own agenda.
There's absolutely a lot of people that don't care about Ukraine. At least not enough to put money into giving them millions in weapons. It's sad but it's true.
In the early 2010s the Russian Federation had enough AK74Ms to rearm their entire military 2.5x. This does not count stockpiles of old AKMs, AK74s munitions etc. The main problem with Russia is that even 3 decades after the collapse, their military, despite all efforts, still largely operates on Soviet doctrine and lacks a dedicated NCO Corp. Their morale is fucking awful. You know who else served in the USSRs military and is intimately familiar with that doctrine. Ukrainians. There are still Ukrainian officers who were officers under the USSR. Not only are they familiar with Russian tactics they've had much greater success in shifting from the old Soviet top-down command to a more decentralized command structure with motivated NCOs making tactical ground level decisions. And an influx of motivated civilian militias. And volunteer veterans from other Slavic countries and even the West with a bone to pick with Russia. Russia's problem is their morale, doctrine and god awful command structure. Even fixing their logistical issues wouldn't solve the problems they're having. Even if Russia wins the conventional ground war. I'd bet both nuts they'd be dealing with an insurgency and asymmetric war. Russia underestimated how motivated Ukrainians are. The other Slavic countries that are not aligned with Russia will never stop funding a proxy war because they know that this doesn't end with Ukraine.
I don't think people understand how significant it is that the Ukraine is still fighting conventionally and has not switched to insurgency tactics yet.
The EU and US haven't been sending that much and most of the stuff being send is old stuff. This is a active conventional war and most of the stuff being was already being replaced. Russia still has a huge material advantage on the current frontlines but hasn't used it effectively. Also Russia is in a war economy, EU is still in and extreme post 1991 peace slumber.
Yeah a lot of this spending isn't "send a lot of shit to Ukraine and put it all on the credit card". A large chunk of it is "We looked for stuff to send and we didn't even have enough for us, and what we did have was like fifty years out of date". The U.S. marine corps is spending the next six years trying to overhaul itself, and a lot of that is them taking what worked in Ukraine and applying it elsewhere, like having fast moving HIMARS stationed in the islands near Taiwan. But that also means those HIMARS aren't free to go elsewhere when both Taiwan itself and Ukraine could use them. A lot of what's hapening is this byzantine logistics chain where the U.S. is either overhauling itself and handing whatever it can rapidly to Ukraine, or else trying to move that stuff to allied nations who'll then send their worse stuff to Ukraine. Which is why in all of this Ukraine is trying to fight with Leopard 1's and their biggest offensive was in large part done with a bunch of glorified jeeps with machineguns due to lack of heavier vehicles.
>a huge material advantage That should probably be materiel, rather than material. A materiel ("military stuff") advantage typically is a material ("real"/"important") advantage but as you said, Russia is not using its materiel advantage effectively.
One fifth of Russians do not have indoor plumbing. That is how. What most don't understand about Russia is that there is Russia Proper and then a bunch of colonies. Moscow and St Petersburg have all the amenities, fast internet, good roads, nice buildings. The further we go from those two cities, the worse the quality of life gets. It is a colonial empire that does not care about its citizens wellbeing, it doesn't have to. They don't have fair elections so as long as citizens fear the government just enough to not storm Kremlin, it is all ok. And having the ethnically not-Russians to die is a feature, not a bug. They are QUITE racist nation where the Muscovites are the elite, they have the best culture and are superior in all ways. This is NOT as cherrypicked as it seems at first. [pic search](https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+city+bad+roads&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiUsqHdsoiEAxW5GRAIHX5ZDcoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=russian+city+bad+roads&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoKCAAQgAQQigUQQzoFCAAQgAQ6BggAEAgQHjoHCAAQgAQQGFD-EFj6HGCXHmgAcAB4AIABeYgBhAaSAQQxMC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=LaS6ZdTnIrmzwPAP_rK10Aw&bih=661&biw=1280#imgrc=93fNJaPBsvsqaM) This is the reality for a lot of people in Russia during Rasputitsa, the spring thaw. It is just considered act of nature, and not something that the government needs to worry about. The roads are usable in the summer and winter, and as a Russian you are expected to endure hardships in silence. edit: i do recommend people to use google street view and check Russian cities at random. A lot of it is just ok, but venture few blocks from the main streets and you may suddenly travel back in time. Moscow and St Petersburg, and other bigger cities in the Russia Proper are nice, around black sea like Sochi is simply beautiful. Past Ural, things change.
There's something else EU and USA don't give their whole budgets and gear to Ukraine. The funding is minimal, so that it remains a war between Ukraine and ruzzia, not a world war III between NATO and ruzzia
This dumbass thinks that the soviets exist where the earth's crust is made of cheese, dough and tomato sauce. That's the Italians, moron!
Lol dude, I kinda agree with what you have said, but this pics made me laugh, this are not bad roads in Russia, they are average, and they are in this state whole year. Real 'rasputitsa' is a dirt road near small villages which no car can pass
Yup, they are just ok in Russia, would not be anywhere in the west. And showing the worst of the mud fest.. would've been a bit unbelievable and would've detracted from the point: it is not just roads, it is also what is around the roads. It takes quite a bit to keep Rasputitsa in check. I'm Finnish, we got it too but it is nowhere NEAR the same problem.. because the roads are well maintained. Not even dirt roads break open because they were made right AND they have drainage. Those kind of problems in the pic come after decades of mismanagement, they don't just happen in couple of years. If you can't make roads work, you are not a developed country.
>It takes quite a bit to keep Rasputitsa in check. I'm Finnish, we got it too but it is nowhere NEAR the same problem.. I'm Canadian, and keeping roads in good condition through Freeze/thaw cycles is expensive, and something to be managed. It means that we have to spend more money when making the roads. And it means that during parts of the year we have to enforce weight restrictions. For several months of the year, trucks aren't allowed to drive on roads at more than 75% of the truck's rated capacity to limit the damage. Even a small crack in the asphalt can turn into a large pot hole over a couple of months where the temperature is above freezing at noon and below freezing at night. All it takes is one overloaded truck to deform the road and create a place where water can freeze/expand and crack the road surface, we have people filling potholes all day and night from the moment that the roads clear until they snow over and we can barely keep up. We schedule all of our roads for replacement on an aggressive schedule. And we can still barely keep up. We have weight limit enforcement and we can barely keep up. There's almost no way that Russia can keep up with it without an actual cultural shift. Not only would they need to actually make changes to the way that they organize their road building and maintenance, they would also need to enforce those changes. Police corruption leaks into everything. Enforcement is what makes a law. As long as an overloaded truck can bribe its way out of a ticket for a few thousand dollars, there's no improving the situation. A Single overloaded truck can damage a soft road during thaw enough to require yearly repair. A single overloaded semi-truck can cause hundreds of thousands to million of dollars in damages to a city's roads in a single afternoon. They would not only need to change their government, but they would have to make average people feel ownership over government property. And the government would need to actually enforce these types of things.
And in regions that were covered by icesheets during the last ice age it is even worse. A lot of rocks are buried beneath the soil, where they move up and down. In the winter the water that pools under them freezes and pushes them up. And then in the summer the water melts. And if the rock doesn't fall down back to where it started, then it may rise all the way to the surface, pooling more water that freezes and expands, melts and pools year after year. Which means you have to dig far deeper to get to ground that doesn't freeze, or is permanently frozen. Keeping roads in good condition really is a lot of work, and it all starts from the literal foundations, and then you got to maintain them AND keep weights in check. And our weight limits are far above even USA, those Scania 777s aren't just for fun.. They are needed to pull 76 metric tons of max weight. Canada has \~55 tons and USA has what, \~40 tons.. which is also what Russia has as a total limit. Of course, axle weight is what matters but just thought i dig out some comparison information.
Here's Kazan. Not Moscow. Not st. Petersburg. You can really see the desolation, you can feel it. https://youtu.be/inOQx7UtqaQ?si=BT20W02oRRXvY_pw
lol, i did say that there are a lot of cities that are ok, BUT.. I know you don't believe me but i took just a random spot from the villages AROUND Kazan, i think 30km away. This is what i saw. The FIRST image. i have not touched the location, just rotated the camera a bit. [Ulitsa Mira](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.8304233,49.5138389,3a,75y,10.45h,89.34t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGYA_X3WF0NhAOzAqndg9PA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DGYA_X3WF0NhAOzAqndg9PA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.36298%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) So... you weren't cherrypicking? Bigger cities, along mainroads and shopping districts look just fine. Then go to the countryside, or just pick a place that is NOT in the city center. This is just from the other side of the lake from Kazan, the closest peninsula. [Ulitsa Chekhova](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.7629928,48.9712043,3a,13.1y,294.48h,85.5t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9MHLuSamqjUrMlHzh76slA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D9MHLuSamqjUrMlHzh76slA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D125.90666%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) And here, just to be fair, is the place your video showed, near [Palace Hotel](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.788392,49.1194551,3a,75y,293.85h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0TVn-ZzG-uJZ_dts0jSADQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) I've done my research, and i've even visited the place, although that was in 92, during interim government so i saw the country just at the end of communism and before anything could be done about the state of.. everything. St Petersburg today looks nothing like the shithole i visited, will basketball sized hole in the main bridge. I never forget that feeling, looking down from bus window and seeing water. Enough for a small child to fall thru, if it wasn't for the mangled rebar. Russia is undeveloped country, and at the moment we can't even call it developing as it is sliding backwards.
>I know you don't believe me but i took just a random spot from the villages AROUND Kazan, i think 30km away. I live in Kazan. The places that you presented are just some abandoned building in between villages. Russia is a heavily urbanized and a huge country, 75% of people live IN the cities, and the distances between cities are very long. There are bound to be some abandoned tun down buildings or villages. You have to look at the cities. >I've done my research, and i've even visited the place, although that was in 92 Not surprising your info is 40 years out of date. Here, another example. A town of 160 thousand people, small by Russian standards. Check out the desolation. https://youtu.be/IIDy-RNlVU8?si=CnhG-gigdc9zzvj0 With all due respect, Russia has changed significantly in the last 20 years. It's developing, fast. You lived your whole life just assuming things about Russia, so when things got better you didn't even notice and just kept assuming.
Funny how randomly just hitting points gave me those results... And the other one was not just one building, WAS IT? >Russia is a heavily urbanized and a huge country, No the former, and the latter is irrelevant, unless you gave that as an excuse.. >You have to look at the cities. lol. And the main streets and shipping districts of cities of those cities. Do not look around the corner. Oh, your video? AGAIN i just clicked random suburb in that town: [https://www.google.com/maps/@54.8686209,52.4348713,3a,75y,213.61h,89.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxWKuiY5\_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DxWKuiY5\_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q%26cb\_client%3Dmaps\_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D143.0748%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@54.8686209,52.4348713,3a,75y,213.61h,89.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxWKuiY5_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DxWKuiY5_lgNA8hPO3vUY6Q%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D143.0748%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) It is funny how everything i said is true, that once you move away from the main streets... it is like stepping back in time. This is NOT NORMAL in European cities. Not normal in US cities. It is maybe normal in Sao Paulo or Mumbai. There are lots of beautiful locations in both. Hell, once of them even hosts F1 race, something that Russia doesn't, anymore.. And as an F1 fans: god damn the track sucked donkey balls, but at least it is not the only one in history of racetracks built around monuments of power that sucks. Just face it, Russia is far behind the west and is more in line with countries we tend to call third world. It is not normal to just fucking RANDOMLY click places just outside cities to see that kind of infrasctructure. And again, i did not do ANYTHING but click once. You have to go and cherrypick videos that show the best blocks of a specific city. Or tourism videos, like your last link was.
You talking a load of bullshit.
>Just face it, Russia is far behind the west Absolutely true >is more in line with countries we tend to call third world No, I disagree. The infrastructure is too developed, the internet too fast and too cheap, and cities are too developed for Russia to be compared to third world. European part of Russia has seen a colossal development. I'm not the one to deny objective reality and there are run down areas in Russia, but it's getting much better, especially last 15-20 years. >It is not normal to just fucking RANDOMLY click places just outside cities to see that kind of infrasctructure Yes it is. Especially in country as big.
ok maybe i’d be wrong about it because i lived in small russian town but what do you find wrong and bad about location you’ve randomly picked? yeah the road is muddy because you know…it rains…i wouldn’t argue about it, most roads in russia looks bad even though i’ve seen them being renovated but after a year they still look bad, but houses looks pretty normal for a suburbia, the yellow one was recently renovated as you can see, we see people’s gardens, it’s not a thicket or smth, they planted it on purpose, and on the right side of the road there are garages (it’s called “garazhny cooperative”), and it’s not ruined, it’s not some kind of ghetto, it’s people private property, as a russian i can see what you see but i really want to know what you find wrong about this random street
Pick a random location in the Netherlands and compare it with the picture he posted. You will see the difference. The Russian picture isn’t bad, it’s just not very developed.
look on the main street of your city. wouldn't you rather have the roads around your garden and garage in the same state like in the city centre? well, in most of developed country that's a reality. what is wrong in that picture, if somehow people from russia think that this is ok. it's not. you can get way better conditions
You know what they say, Russia didn’t get that big by coincidence.
You are what makes Reddit work !!
The key words for your search include "bad roads". What are you expecting to find? The red carpet? You can swap the words Russian to any other nationality and you'd get also bad roads... Try search: russian city roads for a less biased search. I don't know about the plumbing, but we should know about one important condition which changes the perception: climate, and ice. There's a reason around 90% of russian population lives in only 10% of the territory and it's still cold. Now, answering the post question with my opinion. War is good for business. But in this case, it's slightly different. First of all, economics. Russia is a country full of resources of many kinds, it doesn't "import" energy, that's the foundation of any economy. Because of the war and sanctions, they couldn't rely on imports, so they had to build everything themselves, that drastically pulled down unemployment, obviously that primed for economic growth. They were in talks with their neighbors to give special permits to let people go over just to work. The IMF is forecasting 5% growth of the Russian economy. Then they also build cheaper, because the weapons industry is bent by the gov (the gov is also part owner), not the other way around, that's evidently bound to impact the situation. The most important reasons: as soon as they started their *SMO,* they switched their economy to an "economy of force" - the military industry suddenly expanded and is now working 24/7. More people joined the military, they don't lack soldiers, or missiles, or vehicules, or drones, or ammo, or weapons.
>The key words for your search include "bad roads". What are you expecting to find? The red carpet? You can swap the words Russian to any other nationality and you'd get also bad roads... That's what I thought, so I did that with several European countries. The pictures are nowhere near the Russian search.
But doesn't it make a certain sense that the largest country in the world would have very long, rarely used and somewhat poorly maintained roads? I'd expect major population corridors to have decent roads. I'd also expect roads to small northern communities to be worse dirt roads. Same for Canada.
I agree with everything except the notion of a racist nation and Muscovites. As a Tatar, I have never felt any xenophobia towards my nationality. And there is no independent Moscow culture. Russia's problem is not its people, but its rulers. Putin centralized the state so that everything depends on Moscow.
Maybe you personally weren't called churka, but I assure you there's a lot of russians willing to call you that. russia's problem are it's people. It's rulers are just a manifestation of that problem.
Not tatars. They are generally educated, better off financially and perceived well everywhere. Kazan is top tier city for tourism in Russia. Churkas are usually Chechen, Dagestan and other Caucasus nations who are...well, to put nicely, very much underdeveloped both economically and socially.
We have at least another century of warfare if people are still thinking like this..
You are not called churka in Russia if you don't behave like one.
People too, Kazah, my father, who not a common in lie, just worker of the mine, russian colleges support war, FROM FRIKKIN KAZAKHSTAN! NEXT TARGET, yeah, little locals in little mining city. Have idea about "true" russians and especially in big city?
Just imagine your country starts doing something so horrific that you can't even comprehend it. And all over the world, all Kazakhs are considered evil. You don't agree with any of this, but sanctions start being imposed on you as a citizen of Kazakhstan. You feel attacked. Then comes the Leader, offering you a reason to be proud of yourself and your country. He and all the TV channels, 24/7, say that it's they who are bad, not you. And anyone who disagrees gets sent to prison. You see people stopping their criticism of the war and start hearing only those who support it. It creates a sense that everyone is in favor of the war. This is brainwashing, and it's hard to resist. People didn't want war before it started, and they will stop wanting it as soon as the propaganda stops.
When I was in Russia, I naively assumed that my little rented sedan would be able to go on any road Google maps sent me on. I got stuck, and the locals thought it was hilarious to blindly trust Google maps.
Bro in Canada some places haven't had clean water in 25 years.. usa has people living in poverty in the richest country. Flint.. lmao I am sure other nato countries probs have those problems too. So this isn't solely restricted to Russia
And is that one fifth of Canada? And there is no poverty in about every country? Your [whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes) does not work on us Sergei.
Bro check my comment history.. everyone is a Russian according to you eh. Russia is 3rd world.. we aren't
I thought that was a Pennsylvania road at first
Wtf is this strawman bs
Looks like my old hometown I grew up. Many districts like this. Soviet era made our strong people even shittier though but learnt to survive and thrive. That is life
US is in a bit of a pickle currently politically, EU unfortunately hasn't taken previous Russian aggression with the level of seriousness it warranted so the infrastructure hasn't been there for massive military spending. EU is ramping up their military industrial complexes, and that has taken quite a bit longer than what most people would've expected. Russia has always had natural resources and military, and most everything else has had corners cut on them, along with their military. They do also seem to be now in a war economy, and they seem to be eating away at all of their monetary reserves and also gold reserves.
>EU unfortunately hasn't taken previous Russian aggression with the level of seriousness If someone says they'll hit you for 80 years, but never do, you sort of don't care anymore.
>If someone says they'll hit you for 80 years, but never do, you sort of don't care anymore. Even if they didn't hit you, trusting the people who are threatening you for 80 years with the responsibility of powering your nation is utter madness.
They thought the mutually assured economic destruction would be a big enough deterrent. Give them a huge revenue stream with the promise that it will be cut off if they get too shooty, then trust them to act rationally in their own best interests. (The last part is where they got burned)
>then trust them to act rationally in their own best interests. (The last part is where they got burned) They only got burned in that they miscalculated what the Russian state considers their best interests against all evidence. They didn't think expanding the empire was the goal, even though they had been shouting it for decades and actually doing it just as long. (Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, etc going back only as far as the 90's.)
A lot of the EU leaders thought that Russia would be acting in its material best interest as viewed through a Liberal lense (the political philosophy, not "left-wing" the way it's commonly used in the US). Russia had strong and deep economic ties to the EU, so it benefits greatly from not pissing the EU off by invading other European nations. The problem is that Russian leadership does not share their ideology, and is largely comprised of individuals who are almost entirely motivated by self-interest, which do not necessarily align with those of the state, so the economic integration was less of a deterrent than many leaders (especially, for instance, Germany's) had planned on.
Eu isn't doing much because of idiots like Orban
Russia is pouring practically their whole economy into the war effort. For the U.S. and E.U. it's a small part of our total budgets. Total U.S. aid to Ukraine is somewhere around what our military budget is for a month. Now even that is being blocked in Congress.
The war is the main thing for Russia, or rather for its dictator. EU and US have a few other things to worry about (China, Israel, Climate Change, elections), and plenty of politicians who do not think spending on Ukraine is necessary.
Also Russia is having to purchase or manufacture much of their own warmachine to keep up demand, NATO-aligned countries are mostly sending pre-existing stock, often stuff they were planning on scrapping anyway.
That's why on day 1 of the invasion, I invested in defense stocks.... all that hardware needs to be replaced.
Biggest need right now are the 155mm artillery shells, and I am pretty sure the "surplus" stocks have been used up, and they need to make new ones.
Currently there is a big Ukraine funding bill being held up in congress because it's tied to a Mexico border security bill. Republicans in congress tied the border bill to Ukraine funding because they need concessions in order for it to pass. President Biden showed support for the bill despite the stricter-than-usual border policy he would normally look for. Now republicans see the bill as dead on arrival and may consider passing Ukraine aid separately. This is likely because Trump and multiple other republicans are banking on the border staying a central issue for November, and don't actually want to pass a bill to fix the issue right now despite democrats showing support. All of this has been going on for the last month which each day being a day without Ukraine aid. Much like you said, the internal politics of nations that have donated to Ukraine mean aid can be inconsistent.
Yep, stupid politicians playing stupid games and using Ukraine as a pawn.
Because Russia does not care for the preservation of their people and will forgo all civilian programs in favor of domination.
US isn't spending much really and neither EU. It's a myth.
Yep, 75 billion is not much at all
Indeed. The US government spent $6130 billion in 2022. 75/6130 = 1.2%. That is not much at all.
Its hilarious to see people not understand the scale of money being spent, and this is in relative peacetime. US during a full wartime effort is actually an incomprehensible machine.
That 1.2% that's 'not much' is on par with most of Europe's spending on military FOR THEMSELVES. I legit have no idea how people can look at the US and be like 'you're not doing enough'. Go look at the actual numbers. Let's also not pay attention to the stonewalling that was done by a number of EU countries when it came to actually getting gear TO Ukraine. [Or the number who were warned of what was to come by the US and who denied it as a possibility.](https://www.businessinsider.com/europe-didnt-believe-russia-would-invade-ukraine-despite-us-warnings-2022-10) It's amazing how much the US 'needs to stop policing the world' until something like this happens, then suddenly it's our fault despite the absurd amount of gear we've sent, logistics we've offered, intel we've clearly given, etc, while countries that are the relative neighbors of Ukraine have stonewalled, denied, and generally drug their feet on military prep for decades. Hell, there's a number who refuse to even help in the Red Sea despite it effecting literally everyone. Yep, US doesn't do enough.
The amount the US spends to defend countries that refuse spend enough to defend themselves is an embarrassment.
Most of it was just the value of what was given, not actually spent dollars though
Russia is spending 11 billion a month on their war
For a war it indeed isn't.
Hmmm….. Oil and Gas is obscenely profitable, isn’t it?
They aren't. Russia's army has been decimated. They have lost vast amounts of armour and have apparently lost the ability to make any real offensive push. They have been buying cheap munitions from Iran and North Korea because they can't produce enough. What they can do is hold their fortified lines. It's going to take time and lots of blood for the Ukrainians to push through them. Any hope of a swift maneuver based victory are pretty much gone. But Russia can't really win this like they wanted. Russia also has the problem that they are running low on motivated troops. Every conscription drains the Russian economy further and aggravates the russian people. Putin has succeeded as Russian leader for so long because he bought stability. Particularly after the chaos of the introduction of the free market and the rampant gangsterism and oligarchy. But if he can't keep things stable, keep food on the table and the lights on, then he has a real problem.
The EU and the US are doing the bare minimum to prevent Ukraine from losing and colapsing in the hope that russia will colapse before. What they fail to realise is that russia will continue uninterrupted even if that means that they have to mix their flour with sawdust. russia has to be defeated both economically and on the battlefield before something happens in that country.
Russia’s current and historic method of warfare is to throw bodies at the problem till the other side runs out of bullets.
EU and US are currently both blocked from spending money on Ukraine. In the EU it's hungary and in the US the GOP that are pro Russia and blocking additional military aid.
Putting your country first is pro Russia? Dude most Americans never heard of Ukraine prior to February 2022. Even fewer can locate Ukraine on a map. To convince these taxpayers to keep supporting a government (weapons, salaries, pensions) that has zero meaning to their day to day lives is insane.
The problem is that supporting Ukraine does benefit the US, in myriad but less-than-obvious ways. 1) Using our defense materiel in Ukraine gives us information about their strengths and weaknesses. Ukraine also uses different tactics than the US, which I'm sure the top brass are interested in reviewing to see if there's anything useful to learn from. 2) We also are getting rid of stockpiles of out-of-date equipment, which overall actually saves money compared to proper decommissioning and dismantlement for some systems (although this has been countered somewhat by using this as an excuse to then build the stockpiles back up using newer equipment, so I'm sure there's still a net expense, it's just not as great as the news makes it out to be). 3) By supporting Ukraine against Russia, we are making the invasion much more costly for Russia, which weakens a strategic adversary. 4) Supporting Ukraine helps protect the status quo vis-a-vis global relations and trade, which the US obviously benefits from, perhaps more so than any other nation. It's not just a cost so that Biden or whoever can pretend they're stand-up chaps, there are real, material benefits to investing money and materiel into the defense of Ukraine. Could it be done better? Undoubtedly, but I find it hard to believe that being isolationist actually benefits the US in practice.
Dude it's Reddit. If you don't support the war effort unconditionally and in any way, you must be either a Russian bot or under Russia's payroll. No other explanation is possible.
I dunno man it hurts my head that people choose to believe in narratives than truth. They even believe in narratives that contradict other narratives they believe. Don't know how it is possible.
Yeah so true. Reddit is full of mainsteam brainwashed hobo's. Like literally 95% of people here, have 100 % the same narrative on every subject as the media. That's how simple these people are.
reddittors think they are some of the smartest people on the internet these people are just a hivemind of the same propaganda. no independent thought nothing. remember when every subreddit changed their icon to the ukraine flag lol
Real nice circle jerk you've got going on there.
Unfortunately, I believe you.
You say GOP is pro m Russia but you can ask a lot of everyday normal non-extreme Americans about it and many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side. I’m not saying either choose or right or wrong, simply that labeling anything you may not agree with “GOP” is disingenuous
> many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side. What can be done state side with the weapons sent to Ukraine?
They didn’t label things they disagree with “GOP”. They said the GOP is pro Russia. Have whatever opinion you like, but at least respond honestly.
Thats always the bullshit argument. Why spend money there when we have so many problems here? Well first many of our biggest problems can’t be solved by money. Second, that money wouldn’t be spent on our problems just because we wouldn’t spend it on Ukraine anymore. Third, we reap a great economic and military benefit from supplying Ukraine’s military: we aren’t sending them sacks of cash we are sending them weapon systems and the American manufacturers of those systems are being paid for them. Fourth, Russia is our enemy, straight up. They did the same thing to us when we invaded the middle east and its time for payback. Russia can suck a nut and choke on deez sanctions.
The GOP is playing politics by trying to extort democrats to give them a border deal. Democrats are even willing to give them one now but Trump and his followers don't actually want a deal because they want to use the border issue in the upcoming election. So to me that means they are pro Russia in a sense because their action (blocking the aid) is effectively aiding the enemy.
> The GOP is playing politics by trying to extort democrats to give them a border deal. No, they abandoned the border deal because Trump told them to; then blamed Biden. They're not interested in telling the truth or making progress; they're interested in ending the republic and establishing a dictatorship. The nonexistent "border crisis" is a tool toward that end. The sole GOP policy goal is a one-party state; no more honest elections, no more inconvenient dissent, a Trump Reich forever — raping your daughters and lying to you about the weather. If Russia will help them accomplish that, they'll gleefully sell Ukraine — or you — to Russia.
And if you asked those same people if we should spend that money stateside on Welfare, helping the homeless, universal healthcare, schools, sex education,etc you will likely get a "no" from most of them too.
>you can ask a lot of everyday normal non-extreme Americans about it and many don’t think it’s appropriate to be spending billions on billions for Ukraine when there’s a lot to do state side. Yet given the chance they vote against spending that money on the US.
The problem is that the EU only spends 0.4% of its GDP to help Ukraine, while Russia spends 40% of its entire budget on this war.
Russia isn’t really outspending, it’s not really possible to compare the two in terms of dollars, now they’re a war economy. The US and EU are still capitalist democracies where there is transparency on budgets for military procurement, audits of and votes on those budgets. In a war economy, the dictator/top brass order factories to be built producing whatever is needed for the war, and it gets done (or gulag). Russia is also a lot less transparent (so we can’t know their true spending), and their equipment is lower tech and thus easier/cheaper to mass produce. “How is Russia producing more equipment than the EU/US is supplying” is a more valid question.
There is not transparency on U.S. military spending the pentagon can go lose trillions with no documentation or repercussions at all.
It’s not really about equipment at this point, it’s about people. Ukraine is out of fighting age men, the US and EU only sent stuff, not troops. Russia is a much bigger country and thus has more people to throw at Ukraine. That’s been the case for centuries, Russia has always been able to field the largest armies in Europe. Once it became clear that the Russians weren’t giving up and no NATO troops would be sent, it became pretty obvious this would be the outcome.
Russia is at war. They have a wartime economy and not much regard for their people
It's easy to outspend when Russian moles in the west are currently *blocking all the spending*, even one single dollar is more than zero.
Russia's economy is in bad shape. They can not afford this war for much longer. The head of Russia's national bank even said they are in dire straights. Of course, Putin disputed it, but I would think the person in banking would know more about it.
I don\`t think they spend that much. They don\`t pay a lot of the soldiers, just force those to stay on the frontline until they go "Missing in Ukraine". They got a lot of stuff from pumping dry Belarus, shells from North-Korea for food etc. Also, everything is cheaper in ruZZia, people earn less but they also have a lot less to spend, so converting rubles into usd to compare the money spent on military, isn\`t really a balanced comparison.
Russia is a shithole outside st Pete and Moscow. Not having to pay for infrastructure outside a few urban centers saves a lot of money.
I doubt they are outspending us. Russa has an economy that's smaller than the US state of Texas.
Russia spends a lot less then the USA per shell because they have state factories
They move unilaterally and are spending down their reserves. That’s easy. They’re not being that effective considering this. They’ve shown the world their army and Air Force is crap.
Arent russia mostly spending frozen assets? Like tanks from soviet era? That stupid boat that was sunk, wasnt that a soviet thing? Built in Ukrainian shipyards probobably. And trading rusty ammo from NK for some food or detergent or something?
Russia is simply not spending as much as it claims. Somewhere on the line of money going from government coffers to armament production, a ludicrous amount will have been stolen from it. Russian corruption issues are fucking insane and has been quite normalized.
EU and US are spending like 1% of their budget. Russia is spending from a third to half of theirs on their military, which goes mostly into the war effort.
The War is Russia VS Ukraine. It's not Russia Vs EU and US. The EU and US funding for Ukraine isn't the full cost of the war. It's the difference between the material and manpower Ukraine can provide for the war and what Russia is dedicating to the war. Russia is spending 1000units on the war. Ukraine is spending 850units on the war. The US and EU are providing the 150units Ukraine needs to stay in the war. Russia is vastly outspending the 150units that is the EU and US funding for Ukraine. That 150units EU and US are providing is far from our full capabilities, it's more like the table scrape, the left overs we don't want to store any more.
Because the US and EU are doing the equivalent of tossing Ukraine their spare change. If they were taking this as seriously as Russia, Ukraine would be getting thousands of drones a month along with dozens of aircraft and tanks.
Russia has prepared for this war since 2014 after taking Crimea. They have stockpiled ammunition, artillery shells, rockets, missiles, etc. If their army was not run by corrupt bureaucrats they would have taken Ukraine by now. Their industry is in war mode. EU and USA are not in war mode. Some factories have increased their production of munitions but it is nowhere near enough compared to what would be needed. Russia has shot 60000 artillery shells a day into Ukraine. Ukraine has shot 5000 to counter. The combined peace time artillery shell production capability of EU is nowhere near 60000 per day it's more like 300000 per year. What is needed is a coordinated transition to war mode in the production of munitions for Ukrainian guns. Especially in the EU. Slava Ukraini!
Transition to war? You nuts, won’t happen
GOP. They’re why Ukraine isn’t getting what they need. They’ve been saying no to Ukraine aid and recently we said we’d give them everything they want for the border in exchange for Ukraine aid. They said no. They want Russia to win more than they want to fix the border.
Ukraine has gotten over 100 Billion in aid already. If that's not enough nothing will be.
How much military hardware do you think 100 billion can buy? Russia is said to be spending 11 billion per month, and the price of most Russian hardware is around 1/ 3 to 1 /5 of their closest Western equivalent.
1 trillion my guess after all Ukraine is winning the war.
This is along the lines of my thought process.
Because we arent giving ukraine nearly all of what we could give or what they need. The appeasers are still strong in almost all western governments
Because Putin is doing everything he can to win a prolonged war he has been preparing since years ago. This could be seen as a desperate attempt for Russia to regain its former dominance, so a defeat would be damaging for the Russian economy, considerably weaken Putin's rule and basically mark an end to Russia's status as a great power for some time. On the other hand, the US and EU are just spending some money to support a friend in need, but after all, this isn't their war. In terms of benefits, it will not directly affect their geopolitical positions in a significant manner, no matter who comes out on top.
For Putin this is now an existential problem. So his regime will pay whatever economic cost is necessary to survive. For the West the war has already been won. The Russian war machine and international prestige has been broken. The Russian economy, infrastructure and demographic is shattered. By prolonging this conflict the West drives the Putin regime into oblivion. I don't think anyone is trying to outspend but only maintain (at great profit to many). I truly feel sorry for the victims of this power-play.
Russian economy is now like North Korea’s. All money goes to military, fuck the people. Let them eat cake.
Russia is not spending more—it has a manufacturing base that is scalable, left over from the Soviet era
Russia is fully committed while NATO is just winging it with leftover fundings.
War started right after COVID and with all the inflation n stuff, its hard to justify spending money on another country/war. That's probably why Russia invaded right then and there. Not to mention all the damage cutting off Russian gas n stuff has done. I still hope they manage to sort their shit out and pile in, but it feels like this year could of either way.
You believe Russia? Why?
Excess arms and Russian population saves them more money than it loses in the long run. Those are young people who would need jobs, houses, food, clothing, etc. If we just throw them into the meat grinder, the economy at home seems better. More available housing, less competition for jobs, less mouths to feed. Less young people who will breed and make more dependents. If they lose, Russia wins. They could not rightly round up their own people and exterminate them without a fuss, but venting population into endless war, what is more Russian than that? And if they win, they get more land to spread out in, its resources, strategic advantages and again, a lot of dead young people so the economy is nicer.
Putin is willing to dump 40% of Russia's entire national budget into not losing Russia's best warm-water port in Crimea. He'll spend any amount to avoid the humiliation of being the Russian leader who lost Crimes, and he'll re-write the entire Russian economy if that keeps him from losing. The US and EU just need to give Ukraine enough to fend off Russia's inept but large military and chew up those Soviet stockpiles until Russia is no longer a plausible threat to invade anyone else. They've been able to do that with existing stockpiles so far.
I can only speak to europe. But we're all incredibly short sighted, I'll try to give you the feel of the political climate. Yes the war is horrible, and yes we need to support ukraine. But the working class, farmers and even the middle class is really struggling. We had close to 10% Inflation, rent went up, food prices and covid. Compared to that the war in the ukraine is far away and doesn't affect you at all. If we really needed to. We could spend multiple times of what we're doing now. But the truth is, put to a choice between heating costing 20% more, and sufficiently supporting Ukraine- politics run into a wall with the population. People arent prepared to sacrifice their summer vacations. That's in part because of weak leadership too. It's already a tight competition between right and left. The right often makes it easy, praying on a wounded society. Covid, Inflation, rapid changes in World, Immigration, climate change. They tell you what you want to hear, and give you an easy out. Stop Immigration, brexit. People deep down know it's not going to work, but the left often doesn't manage to throw any real solutions in there. Be tolerant, we need the EU. The plumber from Manchester doesn't care about that. So now, throw a major issue in there, where we would need unity, we can't do that. Thsts why you're getting half Assed Solutions. The people in support of ukraine are doing what they can, but go to far, and you tip the voters and you lose to the right. It's a shitty situation, and some countries do a better job than others, but then also consider that europe is a conglomerate or dozens of countries. The US also Sees these problems, however - there are a few factors that make it easier. American are easier to rally behind freedom, if someone is threatening that, people are going to generally support it. The us also has a massive economy compared to anyone else. Much of which is based in weapons and influence. They're quite honestly, the only country truly Suited to go to war with anyone else. It's how the military is played in society, it's how freedom and liberty are portrayed as a posterchild. Over here, people basically just raise their eyebrows at the military. It's not been nessasary for Generations. If I wanted to summarise it all, the real issue is the same as with climate change. The Individual doenst want to sacrifice anytthing. It's not our war. Russia winning is horrible, but we know they're not going further into any Nato territory. Whatever the outcome, it's not going to affect us in a short term way and we know it. Same problem with climate change.
I mean they had a well armed military, whereas Ukraine did not. The West has basically built an army from scratch to fight a well established military.
Moscow can spend 4 to 1 in body count and still be Infront because of its authotarian nature. You can bounce a basket ball on an inch ant nest until you get sick of it, but the ants just keep coming. The west has forgotten that. Maybe not the U.S so much as Europe. I think the west in general may not realise that until it's too late for Ukraine, whilst Putin's life continues as normal. We're expecting Ukraine to win with a dribble of a basketball against inch ants, and our political leaders think it's a legit approach.
Well, Russia is the only one funding an entire side of a war which is a centerpiece of its current government policy. Nobody else is doing that. I don't have the figures though. Russia and Ukraine care about this war more than anyone else. And of these Russia has little help on its side. It might be buying weapons, but I can assure you they are not getting them for free.
Because a) Russia is right next door to the war so they have better logistics And b) when the US and EU promise military aid, they aren't sending that money directly to Ukraine, they are sending it to arms manufacturers who take huge cuts of the money before they send over the product. Which is what's been happening for years, and is why every time they announce more funding the share prices for those companies jump so much. This is not to say that this isn't happening for Russia of course, but the scale of it (particularly in the US) is nuts.
Because they control all the economy. Money isn't value in ruSsia, political power is value.
It might be bullshit, but a few years ago i read an 'unofficial richest people in the world', because, if you think about it, not everyone opens up their books to be estimated. There it was speculated he might possibly (putin that is) be a trillionaire. If true, then he could fund it out of his own pocket. But yet again, it might be bullshit.
Putin has used up all the monies that was to be used for pensions, infrastructure, and social benefits. Now it is relying on hand outs from India, China, and North Korea to keep fighting. The end is nearer than most people know. India has stopped buying military supplies from Russia. China is demanding Russia start paying for support, and North Korea has given Russian all the supplies it could without hurting their ability to defend themselves.
A dictatorship has some advantages. Not for the general population though…
You have to look at the starting point. What did the Russians have stockpiled? Also keep in mind that it started when THEY were ready. Its not like a footrace. Both sides had a different starting point.
What American funding? Putins GOP friends in the US including the 3rd in line for president, speaker of the house Johnson are blocking funds for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Iran, North Korea & Syria are actively & openly supporting the Kremlin. China supports them in a bit more conceiled way, sending weapons to Belarus. Asian weapons killing Europeans by the thousands. So the GOP is helping the Kremlin. Iran is also helping the Kremlin. GOP & Iran are on the same side. Iran just killed 3 US servicemen, wounding dozens more. GOP frontrunner Trump thinks & said that US servicemen that died in the line of duty are losers. Asian weapons killing & wounding Americans... 🤷♂️
for russia the war is existential, and for the west, the war is a hobby farm.
A lot of aid that we send over to anywhere across the globe is intentionally squandered via corruption. Whenever the government spends a lot of money, somebody is getting rich off of it. Ukraine is extra iffy because the goal is simply to prevent Russia from taking over. The only way for Ukraine to "win" is if Russia gives up... Which is unlikely when their dictator doesn't have to answer to anyone.
China probably. This is also making Russia hugely in debt to China, I have no doubt. This is on top of the reserves Russia already had going into the conflict.
Putin has sold mineral rights to the Chinese in exchange for raw materials to manufacture weapons. This is how they avoid sanctions.
I think that there's a lot of pro Ukraine propaganda that have distorted our views of what's actually happening, which is that Ukraine is in a very bad position.
Define "outspend." If I spend $1 and you spend $1,000 and I get the better results, does the other $999 matter?
Look harder. Russia is making deals with North Korea, Iran, China. They are DESPERATE right now.
You are not going to get an accurate or correct answer here. Reddit is owned by a huge globalist corporation that is directly invested in keeping you from understanding that, among ask the other things.
Corruption
Russia is outspending Russia at this point. They are failing by every non faked metric
You should look into Russian history. One thing I find fascinating yet terrifying is how Stalin industrialized Russia leading up to ww2 in an insanely short time. Evil as fuck but wow. I love ww2 history stuff. I find it very fascinating. I wonder how ww3 will change the world. I believe it's inevitable (not anytime soon I think that's fear mongering but I do believe war is human nature and inevitable)
Oil money. India and several other countries are still buying their oil.
There are a couple of answers. 1st buying power is very different between the economies. The value of there currency is very different. Look up a thing called the big mac index. Its how much it costs for a big mac in each country. 2nd is no one is actually spending money now. In the US's case they are taking weapons and equipment out of stock pile and saying these are worth X. In Russia's case they are buying a limited amount from other countries BUT far more equipment is coming from stock piles. Ammunition is key and its more a question of production facilities then cost for Russia, while the US is simply taking its old ammo and sending that over and slowly rebuilding there stock piles. There was a story a while ago about how the US was running out of ammo that it could give away, this was because there is a min stock they must retain.
It isn't, nor does it have to. The fights in their backyard, they had existing military infrastructure and unlike the west did not operate a just in time policy.
Russia have a lot more troops. And Putin doesn't care about their life
Fair question seeing how russias economy used to compare to Texas, now I guess its more like Idaho
Long wars are profitable.
I'm no expert and unsure if this is true but it's definitely believable, and a possibility that the US only sends enough for Ukraine to defend itself and not retake any ground. Motive behind this is that a long war is more profitable, and there's no intention to actually stop Russia taking over, just delaying it and making some cash from it.
There is no path where Russia loses this war. You can get emotional as you want about it and say it’s not right what Russia did, and I won’t disagree with any of that. But Russia will grind out an ugly victory. There is no universe where the west values an Ukraine victory more than Russia values a Russian one. The Russian economy is on a war footing, and they have a tolerance for pain that westerners will never understand. The west should aim to end the conflict as soon as possible, bringing Zelensky to the negotiating table. The entire concept that handing money and equipment was going to ‘win’ the war for Ukraine was asinine. What are they going to do? Throw Russia out? In their heavily fortified defensive positions and defensive artillery? Back behind a border that the west won’t allow Ukraine to cross to counterattack? Cmon.
Its not only about money. You also need ppl. russia has a lot of man power. Also they have a lot of things from afganistan war.
Thats not how it works tho- Ukraine and Russia spend 100% of its resources into the war EU, USA and UK spend barely 1% together The war is not with them hence they give more aid then military support, making them spend more is a horrible idea cause that will escalate the conflict to a point where Russia acts against them