Blew your 30 year war chest of blood oil/gas, leaving your future extraction reserves of only the harder, more expensive to get variety.
Made yourself the permanent junior vassal to China, to whom you can now never refuse any demand for resources or concessions.
Destroyed any wisp of diplomatic credibility you’d had since even Stalinist times.
Pissed away your irreplaceable war stockpiles of missiles, attack helicopters, advanced fighter bombers and AWACS planes. Oh, and - the entire Black Sea Fleet. And the use of the Sevastopol Harbor that hosted it.
And - 575,000 working and breeding age males. So far. For a country with brutal demographics way below replacement rates.
And for what? To be within visual range of territory you already controlled for a decade. Put this in perspective - so far in 2024, Russia have lost 180,000 casualties and masses of antiquated equipment, and taken the net sum of territory equivalent to the size of New York City.
And that’s to say NOTHING about what it would take to actually hold that ground long term with occupation forces and settlers despite a permanent insurrection of drones, snipers, IEDs, sabotage, assassinations, car bombs and other goodies that would keep your army bleeding indefinitely and make the American experience in Iraq seem like child’s play.
Yep. no doubt. Imposssible to quantify, but reports at the time were at least a million men fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.
I make no claim that the 575k number is dead. Even UA says that’s their estimate of dead and wounded. And to be extremely generous, let’s say 30-40% of those wounded are probably so disabled, amputees or worse, that not only can they not fight anymore, but they can’t work jobs at their full pre-invasion potential. That would still be hundreds of thousands of lost labor force participants in a country who relies massively on heavy industry and resource extraction manned by able bodied, if often drunk, raw manpower. They won’t be shifting war amputees to service sectors desk jobs and call centers.
These newly disabled veterans will become burdens on a state that probably won’t honor the support agreements to their full extent, making them worse than simply unproductive - it will make them bitter living testaments to the stupidity of this war and it’s broken promises. In the cold caclulus of Russian brutality - these people are better off dead telling no tales and drawing no pension than they would be alive. Russia’s interal ethnic cleansing and useless mouth disposal of their own people sometimes gets lost in the ocean of wickedness that this entire war has been.
So - systems check time.
Made yourself a global pariah
Destroyed your primary export market.
Pissed away your Soviet stockpile inheritance
Blew your 30 year war chest of blood oil/gas, leaving your future extraction reserves of only the harder, more expensive to get variety.
Made yourself the permanent junior vassal to China, to whom you can now never refuse any demand for resources or concessions.
Destroyed any wisp of diplomatic credibility you’d had since even Stalinist times.
Pissed away your irreplaceable war stockpiles of missiles, attack helicopters, advanced fighter bombers and AWACS planes. Oh, and - the entire Black Sea Fleet. And the use of the Sevastopol Harbor that hosted it.
And - 575,000 working and breeding age males. So far. For a country with brutal demographics way below replacement rates.
And for what? To be within visual range of territory you already controlled for a decade. Put this in perspective - so far in 2024, Russia have lost 180,000 casualties and masses of antiquated equipment, and taken the net sum of territory equivalent to the size of New York City.
And that’s to say NOTHING about what it would take to actually hold that ground long term with occupation forces and settlers despite a permanent insurrection of drones, snipers, IEDs, sabotage, assassinations, car bombs and other goodies that would keep your army bleeding indefinitely and make the American experience in Iraq seem like child’s play.
This has all been a GREAT idea.
When people say that lets try the extreme right for once, or that dictators get things done way faster I’ll link your post to them.
Magnificent writeup.
The 575k number is dead and wounded though, many of those will heal fine, so the number is too high for deaths.
But if you include everyone who got the fuck out before conscription hits them, the number should probably be doubled. At least.
Yep. no doubt. Imposssible to quantify, but reports at the time were at least a million men fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.
I make no claim that the 575k number is dead. Even UA says that’s their estimate of dead and wounded. And to be extremely generous, let’s say 30-40% of those wounded are probably so disabled, amputees or worse, that not only can they not fight anymore, but they can’t work jobs at their full pre-invasion potential. That would still be hundreds of thousands of lost labor force participants in a country who relies massively on heavy industry and resource extraction manned by able bodied, if often drunk, raw manpower. They won’t be shifting war amputees to service sectors desk jobs and call centers.
These newly disabled veterans will become burdens on a state that probably won’t honor the support agreements to their full extent, making them worse than simply unproductive - it will make them bitter living testaments to the stupidity of this war and it’s broken promises. In the cold caclulus of Russian brutality - these people are better off dead telling no tales and drawing no pension than they would be alive. Russia’s interal ethnic cleansing and useless mouth disposal of their own people sometimes gets lost in the ocean of wickedness that this entire war has been.
No biggie, only the intelectuals and the educated left. \s
You forgot the million or more Russian men, mostly with great education leaving the country due to the war. That was a harder hit then all the losses.